


perpetual summer

by mfalfanclub



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Beach House, Best Friends, Childhood Friends, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Johnny and Hyuck are brothers, M/M, Miscommunication, Pining, but if you like it then boy do i have a fic for you, chenji may or may not figure into the story at some point, established markhyuck, everyone except markhyuck is very annoying tbh, idiots to lovers, if you don't like miscommunication as a plot device then ummm, jaehyun is a bit of an anxious boy, one bed scenario, side johndo, summer fun in the sun, the same goes for excessive plant discourse and rhyme games, this fic has all the tropes, yujae are lifelong besties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29635404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mfalfanclub/pseuds/mfalfanclub
Summary: Is it a terrible idea to fake-date Yuta? Yes. Is Yuta's reason stupid? Yes. Is something probably, most likely, almost definitely going to go wrong? Yes. But has Jaehyun ever been able to say no to Yuta? No, of course he hasn't.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 85
Kudos: 162





	1. Chapter 1

When he saw Yuta walk through the doors of the Gongcha, his hair wet in his face, jacket hanging haphazardly off one shoulder, struggling to close his umbrella, Jaehyun’s heart started to beat faster again. Not that it didn’t always do that when he saw Yuta, but this time it wasn’t because of the butterflies, it was because Yuta looked as tense now as when he had called Jaehyun half an hour ago to tell him that they needed to talk as soon as humanly possible, and the unease Jaehyun had managed to suppress while he waited for Yuta now flared up again at the sight of him. Yuta saw Jaehyun and spread his lips to mimic a smile, still doing battle with the umbrella, which was spraying raindrops across the floor of the Gongcha. Jaehyun stood up as Yuta approached. Yuta said, “No, no, sit down.”

“You’re going to break the umbrella,” said Jaehyun.

Somewhere within the mechanisms of the umbrella, something popped. The umbrella exploded in Yuta’s hands before caving in on itself. Yuta jumped. Jaehyun tried to take the umbrella from him. Yuta saw the milk tea on the table and said, “Why did you already get a drink? You should have waited.”

“What? Sorry. I’ve been here for like twenty—”

“I was going to buy you a drink,” said Yuta.

He tossed the umbrella under the table and crashed into a seat. Jaehyun put a hand on the back of Yuta’s chair. “You don’t have to. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” said Yuta, folding his hands on the table. “Nothing’s wrong. Sit down.”

Jaehyun frowned at him. Yuta nodded at the other chair. Jaehyun sat. Yuta studied his thumbs as they crossed and recrossed. “I have to tell you something.”

“Okay, so tell me?”

When Yuta just sat there, Jaehyun said, “Yuta, you’re freaking me out, just say it.”

Yuta swallowed. Then he looked up from his hands and said, “You’re probably wondering why I gathered you here today. As I mentioned on the phone, an emergency situation has arisen that requires immediate attention.”

That sounded more like Yuta. “Yeah, and?”

“I made a bet with Johnny and now I need to get a boyfriend before he does. That’s where you come in.”

Jaehyun’s head went light. Boyfriend. You. Come in.

“I need you to fake date me,” said Yuta, and the lightness in Jaehyun’s head fizzled. “Just two and a half weeks. Until Hyuck’s environment fair. Please. I’ll literally do all the cleaning from now until the end of the spring.”

Jaehyun felt like he’d been gently punched in the chest. “Fake date you?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta. “We won’t have to do anything to make people believe it, we’ve been best friends all our lives, how could we not fall in love?”

“How could we not fall in love,” Jaehyun said.

Yuta’s elastic smile turned warm. “Exactly! Everyone will buy it. This is actually going to be hilarious. We can mess with people so much.”

“Wait, wait. Wait,” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah.”

“Why…?” Jaehyun tried to clear his throat. “Why do we need to do this again?”

Yuta pulled back. “If you don’t want to, we don’t have to. Of course. It’s totally up to you.”

“No. I want to.”

“Oh! Sweet, thanks.”

“It’ll be funny,” Jaehyun said, “like you said. But Yuta, I’m still missing the backstory. Johnny? A bet with Johnny?”

“Oh yeah!” Yuta pushed rain-matted hair back from his forehead. “Hyuck is working out what stalls he’s going to have at the fair, and he basically told me and Johnny that he needed one of us to work the pie booth and one of us to work the cotton candy machine.”

“Sorry. Back up.”

“The pie booth, as in, getting pied in the face by strangers for at two thousand won per pie,” said Yuta. He was sipping Jaehyun’s milk tea now.

“Back up further,” said Jaehyun.

“The fair, as in, Hyuck’s fundraiser for the environment? Senior project?”

“Oh yeah! Okay. I got it. So you and Johnny have to…?”

“Yeah, one of us has to get pied all day, and one of us gets to make cotton candy all day. So we made a bet that whoever can get a boyfriend first,” Yuta said, digging his phone out of his pocket, “gets to do the cotton candy, and the other one has to get pied. Here. Take this.”

“Weird fucking bet,” said Jaehyun, catching the milk tea that Yuta had shoved back at him half-empty. “You could have just flipped a coin or something.”

“Yeah,” said Yuta, “I don’t know. We figured since we’re both always complaining about not having boyfriends. Plus, like, you know Johnny, everything always has to be high stakes with him. Smile.”

Jaehyun posed for Yuta’s picture. Yuta, complaining about not having a boyfriend? Jaehyun hadn’t ever heard him complain about not having a boyfriend. The camera shuttered. Jaehyun said, “So it’s only until the fair?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta, “then we can tell everyone it was a joke.”

“Johnny will kick your ass if we tell him it was a joke.”

“Then you’ll have to keep dating me forever,” said Yuta, “so I don’t die.” He bent over his phone, stuck his lip out and blew his hair out of his eyes. It fell back over his face. He’d been growing it out. He certainly complained about _that_ constantly, his hair getting long, but every time Jaehyun told him to just cut it, he asked Jaehyun if he really should, and Jaehyun doubled back every time, no, it looks amazing, well, he should cut it if it bothers him that much, but it looks great so no, don’t cut it, good hair always requires some degree of suffering. And Yuta would toss that smile across the space between them, like a coin spangling into a fountain, and he’d sweep back his hair and say “Thanks Jaehyun,” or “Smart Jae,” and Jaehyun’s heart would ache like it was cramping from overuse.

Ah, shit. This was a bad idea.

Jaehyun leaned over the table to say something—he wasn’t sure what yet, something like, “ _I’ll date you as long as you let me,”_ or maybe _“I take it back, I don’t want to tear my own heart into pieces,”_ or else just _“Wait Yuta, maybe we should talk about this more_ ”—but before he could speak, Yuta held up the phone and chirped, “There! Congratulations, fake BF, our fake relationship is IG official.”

Yuta had posted Jaehyun with his milk tea and captioned it “ _from best friends to boyfriends_ ” with the boys-holding-hands emoji. The Jaehyun in the picture was eyeing the camera quizzically, half-smile turned a degree or two aside, brow slightly drawn in fondness and bemusement. Jaehyun was never sure whether he loved the pictures Yuta took of him because Yuta took great pictures, or because he liked feeling seen by him.

“You look really good,” said Yuta, pulling back and tapping at his phone, “I’ll send that to you.”

“I always look good in your pictures,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta bobbled his head and said, “Oh, uh huh, Mr. I’m-So-Photogenic, okay.”

“No,” said Jaehyun, “like, your photos always look good. You always…”

“Capture the essence of your soul in the angle of your gaze, right?”

“Right,” said Jaehyun, “it’s because you’re a good photographer.”

“Yeah,” said Yuta, thumbs still going at lightning speed on his phone, “you looking good in my pictures is completely because of my amateur photography skills and not at all related to the fact that you look like a descendent of Greek gods.”

Jaehyun let the pleasure at the compliment roll over him. “Maybe it’s just because you know me so well.”

Yuta stopped typing and fixed Jaehyun in the headlights of his smile. “Yeah. True. What else are best friends for, if not for getting good pictures of each other?”

“Being fake boyfriends, apparently,” Jaehyun said.

“Aha,” said Yuta, snapping his fingers and pointing at him. “Johnny’s questioning the legitimacy of my post, go comment something cute on it.”

“You already sent it to him?” Jaehyun said.

“Yeah, I had to make sure I had proof of getting a boyfriend before he did. Now he’s all like _that was too fast you’re making it up_.”

“But you are making it up,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta put his phone down. “Sir, with that attitude, we might as well break up right now.”

“Okay,” said Jaehyun quickly, “okay, we don’t have to break up, I’ll comment something,” and he opened his phone to an Instagram notification. _nakamotoputa tagged you a post_.

“You’re an angel for this,” said Yuta while Jaehyun looked through the picture’s 8 likes, the _“?????”_ comment from markciity, the “ _OH MY GOD_ ” from t_yongie. “You’re a god, Jaehyun, seriously. I’ll clean and do groceries and cook all spring. I’ll do whatever you want. Just say the word.”

“Whatever I want?” said Jaehyun, trying to keep his laughter light. “I don’t think you realize how dangerous a promise that is.”

“I know exactly how dangerous a promise that is,” said Yuta, “because I know you and I know you’ll start to get uncomfortable after watching me do all the work around the house for a week and you’ll go back to doing your share.”

Jaehyun recrossed his legs under the table. Yuta wasn’t wrong. “Damn. Taking advantage of my kindness.”

“Why else do you think I asked you to do this?” Yuta said cheerfully.

Jaehyun refreshed the post. Twenty-five likes and three more comments. “ _Congratulations!!!” “NO WAY I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR 33 YEARS????” “DESERRVEEEE_ ”

“Yuta, people are loving this,” he said.

“They’ll love it even more when you comment.”

“What should I comment?”

“Anything, Jaehyun, it literally doesn’t matter.”

Yuta took Jaehyun’s milk tea back. Jaehyun typed a comment. His thumb hovered and then he hit send.

Yuta picked up his phone and read the comment aloud. “ _I love you_.”

Jaehyun made a noise that he hoped sounded affirming.

“Not your most creative stroke,” said Yuta, tossing the phone back onto the table.

Jaehyun leaned his head into his hand. “Isn’t having a fake boyfriend for two weeks a lot of work just to get out of one night of pieing?”

“Nah.” Yuta noisily sucked up the remainder of the milk tea. “If it were somebody else, maybe. But with you? This’ll be a piece of cake.”

Jaehyun expelled a puff of air, less in laughter than in disbelief at the situation he’d suddenly found himself in. Yuta stood up and said, “Now I’ll buy you a drink for real. Do you want the same thing or something else? You’ve been wanting to try the brown sugar one, right?”

“Uh, sure.” Jaehyun followed Yuta, who was already halfway to the front, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yuta.”

“What?”

“Your sister just texted me,” said Jaehyun, holding out his phone.

Yuta’s eyebrows shot up and the satisfied grin dropped off his face. He took out his own phone. “She texted me too,” he said. “Oh god. She’s in the chat with my parents.”

“If she tells your parents, they’ll tell my parents!”

“I,” said Yuta, “didn’t think this through.”

Jaehyun bit both lips between his teeth and widened his eyes at him. Yuta tried to keep his lips turned down, but he was laughing. Jaehyun glared at him. Yuta said, “What have we done…”

“Piece of cake, my ass,” hissed Jaehyun, and then the kid at the counter said, “Can I help you?” and Yuta turned away from Jaehyun to ask, “What’s your biggest size, large or extra large?”

While Yuta ordered, Jaehyun stood behind him and reread his sister’s text. “ _Jaehyun!!! I saw Yuta’s post and I want to say congratulations, you two belong together <3 Miss you!_”

“Jaehyun?” Yuta said after he finished ordering.

“What?”

“You, like, look like your brain is somewhere else.”

“Your sister said we belong together.”

“Ah,” said Yuta, lifting his phone up again, a stitch in his smile. “She did say that.”

“Maybe they’re right,” Jaehyun said.

Yuta’s typing fingers paused. “Hm?”

Jaehyun stared at him.

Yuta said, “They?”

“Everybody,” coughed Jaehyun, “uh…”

“True, yeah,” said Yuta, “there’s like, celebration across the gram right now.”

They looked at each other for a while and then Jaehyun said, “Weird, right?” and Yuta laughed. “Weird.”

Jaehyun nodded and took a few steps closer to the pickup counter. Yuta had been right—Jaehyun’s brain was somewhere else. Jaehyun’s brain was nonexistent. Why did he run his mouth like that? He’d never be able to pull this off, not if he started saying whatever dumb shit went through his head.

Behind him Yuta said, “But what did you mean, maybe they’re r—”

“I don’t know,” said Jaehyun, “I was just talking. Oh, Mark just texted me. Look at this. He’s freaking out.”

“Freaking out?” said Yuta, coming close to Jaehyun’s shoulder so Jaehyun could smell his cologne, and Jaehyun took a deep breath.

These were going to be a long two weeks.

Jaehyun’s mom called him while they were still at the Gongcha. Jaehyun showed Yuta the phone across the table. Yuta took one look at the incoming call and made a _don’t_ gesture with his hand. Jaehyun made a _what do you want me to do?_ motion and Yuta repeated the _no_ gesture, then hit him. Jaehyun was already picking up. “Hey, Mom?”

“Jaehyunnie?”

“Hi.”

Yuta nodded at the door, took Jaehyun’s wrist, and dragged Jaehyun out of the Gongcha. Jaehyun’s mom was talking about how Yuta’s mom had just called her. “And guess what she said Momoka said Yuta said on Instagram?”

“That’s a lot of…”

“That you and Yuta are going out now?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Yuta was making the _call it off_ motion across his throat again. Jaehyun made a face at him and said, “It’s just, like, something we’re…”

“That’s great, Jaehyun, that’s really wonderful. I texted your dad, he’s thrilled he won’t have to worry about whether we can trust the boys you date anymore. And I thought that was the funniest thing, because he’s right! We couldn’t have picked a better match for you if you’d let us, in fact, if you _did_ let us find a boyfriend for you we probably would have talked to the Nakamotos first. I’m just joking, baby, of course you have to pick your own people to date, I know, but after that boy with the tattoos last year, I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t tempted to do a little matchmaking…”

Jaehyun held the phone away from his ear because his mom’s voice was getting faster and louder. Yuta was stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, doubled over with silent laughter. Jaehyun was starting to feel terrible. “Mom, hang on,” he said.

“Sure, baby, but just one more thing, I’m so proud of you for being who you are, and doing what you…do, and I love that you’re doing that with Yuta, that’s just—you know what I mean, I’m just so happy for you. Now what were you going to say, honey?”

“Mom, Mom, it’s not what you think. I—listen, Yuta and I aren’t actually d—”

Yuta lunged for Jaehyun’s phone. Jaehyun yelled, finding himself pinned to the side of the building. “You can’t tell her,” Yuta whispered.

Jaehyun whispered back, “You heard how happy she is! You want me to lie to my mom just so you can get out of a night of getting pied?”

“You wouldn’t have had to lie if you hadn’t picked up!” said Yuta, and Jaehyun, sweating, tried to wrestle away from him without dropping his phone or the milk tea, but Yuta grabbed Jaehyun’s wrist in one hand and seized the phone with the other, then spun away. “Hiiii, Mama Jeong! Yeah, it’s me!”

Jaehyun heard his mom cooing on the other end and swiped for the phone, but his strength was severely depleted after being pinned between Yuta and the wall for ten seconds, and Yuta sidestepped him. “I know, I miss you guys too! How is Papa Jeong? I was just thinking the other day about the galbijjim you made at Chuseok last year, I’ve been craving it like crazy. Oh, no, no, you don’t have to. Really? God, thank you so much, it’s… Of course, just drop it off at the apartment anytime. Okay. I know I always say this, but you’re truly an angel. No, really.”

Jaehyun closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the back of his hand against the wall.

“Oh, she did tell you?” Yuta laughed brightly. “Yeah. Momoka’s so fast with this kind of stuff, I think she knew before I knew. Oh, thank you. That’s so sweet, Mrs. Jeong. Well, he’s your son, you know what a catch he is… You’re really too sweet. Thank you so much. Say hi to Papa Jeong for me. Okay, yeah, I’ll give you back to Jaehyun. Bye, Mama Jeong. I know. Bye.”

Jaehyun, unable to muster more than a head shake and a glare, took back the phone. “Mom.”

“He’s so darling, Jaehyun, you really lucked out, I mean, he lucked out with _you_ , of course, you’re the most precious boy in the world, but Yuta really comes close.”

“Mom, just so you know, it’s nothing serious. We’re just trying it out. And seeing how it goes.”

“That’s fine, baby, that’s what your twenties are for. Seeing where love takes you.”

Jaehyun made a pained noise while his mom went on, “And I’ll just say, and this’ll be the last thing I’ll say about it, I always thought you’d make a perfect pair, after you told us you liked boys and everything, I thought, if Jaehyun could just get Yuta to go out with him, that would be perfect. Because you two just get along so well, and you’re so close, and to be honest I did wonder for a while if you had deeper feelings for him than just…”

Jaehyun said, “Yeah, Mom, I’m really sorry, I have to go now, but I can talk later if you want.”

“Okay, sweetie, no problem, sure. Give Yuta a big hug for me and I’ll talk to you soon. And text Dad.”

“Sure.”

“I love you, honey. Text your dad.”

“Yep. Love you, Mom.”

“Bye, honey, love you.”

Jaehyun hung up. Yuta, who was sitting on the edge of the platform in front of the apartment building, said, “You know, that really cut me deep when you said it’s nothing serious. Is this thing just friends with benefits to you?”

“Yes,” said Jaehyun, going inside, “the benefits are that you get a fake boyfriend and I get a butler for the rest of the spring.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Yuta, running ahead and cutting him off so he could press the elevator button. Jaehyun frowned at him. “My butler duties,” said Yuta. “They’re starting now.”

The elevator opened and Yuta ushered him inside. Jaehyun raised a hand to hit the floor 6 button. Yuta batted his arm aside. “No, no. Just relax. You don’t have to lift a finger for the next two weeks.”

Jaehyun said, “I don’t like this.”

“Let me hold that for you, king,” said Yuta, taking the milk tea from him. Jaehyun gave him a flat look. Yuta sipped it, smiled, and said, “Just say the word and I will hold the straw to your lips. Only the best service for His Highness.”

Jaehyun wanted to smack the milk tea out of Yuta’s hand and kiss him. “Nope. Stop.”

“Okay.”

Jaehyun had never really wanted to tell Yuta how he felt about him. He’d wanted to do other things, sure—kiss him, be with him, never let him go. But to say to him, _I have feelings for you_ —nope. He didn’t need to go there. He shouldn’t. Not when this connection they shared was already so miraculous the way it was. This bond, this balance. It had been there since they were kids and still visiting each other regularly. Their mothers had been friends in college, and their families would vacation together every summer. Korea, Japan, Thailand once. In all those summer memories, Yuta was always the focal point. Yuta’s hands digging next to Jaehyun’s in the sand where Yuta’s sister had said turtle eggs were buried. Yuta running down the stairs in front of Jaehyun while somebody yelled at them not to run. Yuta’s scraped knee bleeding while he cried and Jaehyun scrambled back onto his bicycle to get help, pain twinging in his chest as if he himself were the one who had fallen. Yuta’s face bursting out of the water. Yuta’s eyes in the glow of the sparklers. Yuta was the center of his world. He was Jaehyun’s best friend.

Even when their families stopped visiting, that didn’t go away. It didn’t go away even when they went years without speaking. Summer wasn’t synonymous with Yuta anymore, but they still belonged to each other, in a way, because of all the memories. Jaehyun never doubted for a second that Yuta still carried the memories with him, the same way he did himself. It was an equilibrium that would have been broken if either of them ever said, “Hey, it’s been so long!” or “I’ve missed you all these years, what have you been up to?” And they didn’t say those things, because while they were true, they implied an interruption, a time when they hadn’t belonged to each other. A time when they hadn’t been a part of each other’s lives. Jaehyun was going through middle and high school, and his world was changing around him, but Yuta wasn’t changing. Yuta was always there. They’d come together again, at some future time, in some yet-unknown capacity. It didn’t seem to matter when or how; even now, they weren’t really apart.

Of course, it did matter, and Yuta was changing, but Jaehyun didn’t know any of that yet. What was true was that they would come together again, sooner than later. Yuta’s mom called Jaehyun’s mom with the news that Yuta had gotten into Seoul University, where Jaehyun was planning to go next year. There was a lot of excited shouting, a lot of back-and-forth. Finally, Jaehyun was put on the phone with Yuta. The last time they’d spoken directly, instead of through messages passed on by their moms, was in eighth grade when Yuta’s family had come to Seoul for New Year’s.

“Yuta!” Jaehyun had said into the phone, his hand fumbling with it.

“Jae, Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun could hear the excitement in his voice. “Oh my god,” Jaehyun said.

“We’re going to Seoul University together,” Yuta said.

Jaehyun repeated it. “We’re going to Seoul University together!”

It was a surreally happy day. Jaehyun felt victorious somehow, vindicated, even. Like it was his own success and his own good news to celebrate. Like fate had flailed its limbs with intention instead of arbitrarily for once.

And then they were at Seoul University, and Yuta was the center of Jaehyun’s world again. They were older now, and Yuta was different—more stubborn than Jaehyun remembered, and more self-possessed, and more driven. Jaehyun, on the other hand, had become warier, more reserved. They had grown up in different directions, and yet Jaehyun still felt so close to him. Jaehyun still loved him. Yuta was the best part of everything, he was the glow of summer, he was the warmth in winter, he was spring and fall’s brightest color. They were a vivid contrast. It didn’t make any sense, and Jaehyun knew it was special, and he knew better than to mess with something special. He knew better than to try to change what had never changed. It would be greedy to ask for more from this friendship, the kind of friendship that some people only ever dreamed of having.

Jaehyun was one of the luckiest people on earth, and he had never been one to push his luck.

Yuta was, though. Yuta was definitely the kind of person to push his luck.

He was doing it now, begging Jaehyun to take pictures of him for Instagram for the third time in the last two hours. “Come on,” he said, posing with his chin in his hands, “the world wants to see how good your boyfriend looks in cafés. Should I pretend to drink my coffee? Or just hold the cup near my lips?”

“This is the fakest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Johnny, who was sitting across from them.

“You’re just bitter,” said Doyoung next to him. “I think you guys are cute.”

“Thank you, Doyoung,” said Yuta. He turned exaggerated puppy-eyes to Jaehyun. “Baby,” he said sweetly, “come on, just one more picture.”

Jaehyun could understand why Johnny didn’t believe the relationship is real. Yuta was terrible at this. Even the initial brain-frying rush of Yuta calling him “baby” had quickly worn off because of how ridiculously frequently he said it. “The world knows how good you look in cafés,” Jaehyun said, “ _baby_.”

Yuta knocked Jaehyun’s knee hard with his under the table.

“But okay,” Jaehyun went on, digging out his phone yet again, “I guess they wouldn’t hurt from seeing it one more time.”

“All right,” said Doyoung as Jaehyun snapped a photo, “all right. Instagram loves your faces, etcetera, etcetera. I just want to know how this happened, like, I didn’t even know either of you liked each other? Let alone _both_ of you?”

“It didn’t happen,” said Johnny. “They’re lying so Yuta doesn’t have to get pied at the fair.”

“Shut up, Johnny,” said Yuta. “It’s real. Jaehyun really likes me. Right, Jaehyun?”

Jaehyun had to restrain an eye roll. “Yes,” he said, “I like you.”

Something in him still rang like a bell when he heard himself say it aloud. He stifled it. Yuta, meanwhile, was saying, “See? Now stop going after your friends’ relationships and get one of your own, Johnny Suh!”

“Where were you when you made it official?” Johnny said. “Both of you answer at the same time. Three two one.”

“Gongcha,” Jaehyun and Yuta answered simultaneously.

“Okay. And what did you say before your first kiss? Three two one.”

Jaehyun looked at Yuta in panic. Yuta said, “That’s personal, jackass!”

“Yeah, Johnny, stop the interrogation,” Doyoung said.

Johnny groaned. “Doyoung, don’t tell me you believe this bullshit.”

Doyoung said, “Not really. But it’s funny. If they’re having a good time, I’m having a good time.”

“ _What?_ ” said Yuta. “Doie!”

“Listen,” Doyoung shrugged, “your post did go up insanely fast after you made the bet with Johnny.”

“Because—! Because I knew Jaehyun was the only boy I wanted to date!” said Yuta. “It was easy to act fast!”

“Sure,” said Doyoung, “maybe it was easy for you to go fast. I don’t see why Jaehyun agreed so quick though.”

“Well,” said Jaehyun, “I’ve been in love with him my entire life, so, yeah.”

Johnny scoffed. Doyoung just raised an eyebrow while Yuta said, “Exactly. Listen, yes, it was fast, but you guys don’t have to act like we’re carrying out some undercover operation. We’re just two best friends who love each other.”

“Two best friends?” Johnny said suspiciously, while Jaehyun echoed more softly, “Two best friends?”

“Who love each other!” Yuta said emphatically. When they continued to look at him, he said, “Who are _in love!_ Madly!”

“If you’re in love madly,” said Johnny, “then kiss.”

Jaehyun’s heart stopped. Yuta said, “We’re not kissing just because you want us to! We’re in the middle of a café! No one wants to see that!”

“Oh, my god,” said Johnny, throwing up his hands.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” said Doyoung with a smirk.

“Hey,” said Jaehyun, trying to sound angry and serious. “Johnny Suh.”

Johnny lifted his narrowed eyes off Yuta for probably the first time today and looked at Jaehyun. “What, Jaehyun Jeong?”

“I would appreciate it,” said Jaehyun, “if you would stop questioning my love for my boyfriend.” He sounded too stiff. He was awful at this. “Just because you are surprised by it doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

Johnny gave him a flat look while Doyoung slapped a hand over his mouth to contain a laugh.

“You’re conspiring against me,” said Johnny.

Yuta stood up. “Maybe if _you_ had confessed to _your_ crush before _I_ did to _mine_ , you wouldn’t be so sad and nasty right now! Come on, Jaehyun, let’s get out of here.”

“He has a point,” Doyoung said as Yuta grabbed Jaehyun’s hand and yanked up out of his chair. Jaehyun followed him. He liked how possessively Yuta held his hand. Even if it wasn’t real.

“Jesus,” said Jaehyun when they were out on the sidewalk, “you’re terrible at this.”

“It’s not my fault!” Yuta said. “I didn’t think Johnny would be so skeptical, it’s making me freak out!”

“I know,” said Jaehyun.

“Why’s it so hard for him to believe?” Yuta stormed. “What’s so crazy about you and me falling in love?”

The sentence echoed in Jaehyun’s mind. “Well,” he said, “I mean, I don’t think it’s you and me he can’t believe. I think it’s _you_ he can’t believe. You sound like a bag of candy hearts every time you open your mouth.”

Yuta said, “Oh, like you’re so much better! Mr. I-Would-Appreciate-It-If-You-Stopped-Questioning-My-Love—”

“Okay! We’re both thinking too hard about it. We need to act more natural! Like we used to before.”

“Like we used to before? But that was when we were bottling up all our feelings,” said Yuta. “Shouldn’t we be free with our love now that we’ve confessed it? Like, honeymoon phase?”

God, this was too much. The world thrummed a little dizzily as Jaehyun looked into Yuta’s face. His stubborn frown was fixed on his brow.

“No, I mean, sure,” Jaehyun said, hoping his words were making sense, “we can be more free with our love, but not to the point of sounding like cartoons. We’re not different people. We’re still us.”

“Of course we’re still us,” said Yuta. “We’re just us in love. Wouldn’t that affect how you acted around me? Being in love with me?”

Yuta was being willfully obstinate. That was something Jaehyun loved about Yuta more than he liked. “No. I don’t know. Would being in love with me change how _you_ acted?”

Yuta stopped. He coughed. Then he looked at Jaehyun and started to laugh. “Damn,” he said, “you’re right, I guess it wouldn’t.”

“Right,” said Jaehyun, relieved.

“Except that I would kiss you sometimes,” Yuta said. “And other stuff.”

_Other stuff?_ “Well you handled that,” Jaehyun said, “uh, well. When you told Johnny that stuff’s personal. We won’t have to worry about people trying to get us to kiss.”

“Uh huh,” said Yuta, softly, as if he were thinking.

Jaehyun didn’t like Yuta’s tone. Yuta always said “ _uh huh_ ” like that to preface a statement of respectful disagreement. He’d started doing it not long after entering law school. It was another annoying thing Jaehyun loved about him.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun, trying to change the subject before Yuta could think any further, “anyway, have you talked to Hyuck? I wanted to tell him that I could help with the fair too if he needs people.”

“Hyuck wanted to see both of us this weekend,” said Yuta slowly.

Jaehyun knew exactly where this was going. “Okay. About the fair? Does he already have someone to work the ring toss? I always—”

“He’s probably going to try to make me prove I won the bet,” Yuta went on, “like Johnny. You know how they are. Being irritating runs in the family.”

“The Instagram post is plenty of proof,” said Jaehyun. “They’ll just have t—”

“I don’t see how we’re going to get through this without having to kiss eventually,” Yuta said.

Jaehyun had known he was going to say that, but it still felt like a punch between the eyes. “No one can force us to kiss, Yuta.”

“No,” said Yuta, “they can’t, but if we’re weird about it for long enough, they’ll stop believing us.”

“They already don’t,” said Jaehyun.

“What? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”

“No, I mean kissing isn’t going to make them believe us.” Jaehyun was still seeing stars. He couldn’t believe he was passing up the chance to kiss Yuta. “We can be as loud and couply as we want, but the only thing that will make Johnny and Hyuck leave us alone is if we just act natural. We’ve got to dial it down, not up.”

They rounded the corner, and the sunglazed steps of the Hwang Center came into view. Jaehyun climbed up a few steps and sat down. Realizing Yuta hadn’t said anything, he said quickly, “Don’t you think?”

“Mmm.” Yuta’s arms were folded. He sat next to Jaehyun. “I’m not convinced, but okay, yeah, let’s dial it down for now.”

Jaehyun breathed out in relief. “When does class start?”

Yuta looked at his phone. The breeze played a strand of hair over his face. “15. Stay with me a few minutes, I don’t want to go in yet.”

“Hey, Yuta!”

A pretty girl in a yellow skirt was waving up the street. She jogged a few steps in her heels, holding her shoulder bag against her side.

“Hi Joy,” said Yuta. “Little later than usual today?”

“How would you know? You’re earlier than usual.”

“Touché.”

“Did you finish the reading? I only got twenty pages in and I fell asleep.”

“Better than me, I think I read like ten. Joy, have you met Jaehyun?” Yuta said, sticking a thumb in his direction.

Joy’s eyes widened. She looked Jaehyun up and down. “ _Oh?_ ” she said.

Yuta rolled his eyes, chewing on his lip to hide a smile. “Okay.”

“Hi,” said Jaehyun.

“Hi,” said Joy. Then she looked at Yuta and said out of the corner of her mouth, “He’s _gorgeous!_ ”

Jaehyun laughed, face flushing. Yuta said, “Yes, thank you for that observation, Joy, I’m well aware.”

“Jaehyun,” said Joy as she sat down on the step below them, “I’ve heard _so_ much about you.”

“You have?” said Jaehyun.

“All right, all right,” said Yuta, “yes, it’s big news, I’m dating my childhood best friend, woohoo.”

“No,” said Joy, “that’s old news. The big news is that he’s actually as beautiful as you said he is. Honestly I didn’t believe you.”

Jaehyun was blushing so hard, he wanted to bury his face in his hands. “Come on, Joy,” said Yuta, “stop it, you’re embarrassing him.”

“Embarrassing him, or embarrassing you?” said Joy gleefully. “Kun!”

“Hey,” said another student crossing the steps to them, this one in a sweater vest over a T-shirt and glasses.

“Hey Kun,” said Yuta, “we’re—”

“Kun, that’s Yuta’s boyfriend!” said Joy, pointing across Yuta at Jaehyun. “Look how stunning he is!”

Kun grinned at Jaehyun and said, “Wow, I thought Yuta was lying.”

“ _Guys_ ,” said Yuta. “He’s nice, too, if you’d stop talking about him and talk to him.”

“No, no,” said Jaehyun, “uh, it’s flattering.”

“Yuta’s right. Hi, Jaehyun,” said Kun, going around Joy, “I’m Kun. Great to meet you.”

“You too,” said Jaehyun. “You guys are all in the same class at law school…?”

“We’ve got a couple classes together, yeah,” said Kun. “I hear you and Yuta have been together your whole lives, but you only just admitted to each other that you’re in love.”

Jaehyun coughed and looked at Yuta. Joy said, “Jaehyun, I’m so sorry, I genuinely assumed Yuta was blinded by love and talking out of his ass when he said you look like a model.”

Jaehyun said, “No, I…he…”

Yuta said, “Leave the poor man alone, can’t you see he doesn’t know how to accept compliments? Also, I’m offended you didn’t believe someone this hot would date me.”

Joy said, “Shut up. You’re obviously sexy.”

“Yeah, it’s more the fact that you talked about Jaehyun like he’s God,” said Kun.

“Can somebody please explain what was in the reading?” Yuta said. “Kun, tell me you finished it.”

“Of course I did,” said Kun.

“What did it say?” said Joy.

“Like I’m gonna tell y’all,” said Kun.

“Kun, you SUCK,” said Joy.

“Please!” said Yuta.

“Read it yourselves next time,” said Kun. “I have to go talk to Lee before class starts. Jaehyun, it was nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, same. Likewise,” said Jaehyun.

“Yuta, let’s go in,” said Joy, “class is starting soon.”

“Yeah,” Yuta said, shouldering his bag. He looked at Jaehyun.

“Bye,” said Jaehyun.

“See you,” said Yuta, “baby.”

There was less schmaltz on the word this time, less forced sweetness. In fact, it would have sounded entirely natural, if Yuta hadn’t been standing there with his hands on his hips like he didn’t know what to do with himself. There was a roller-coaster, stomach-floater moment where Jaehyun thought Yuta was going to kiss him. Instead, though, he just pulled Jaehyun into a hug.

“Have fun in class,” said Jaehyun self-consciously, while Joy whispered something in Kun’s ear and they snickered.

Yuta said, “Thank you.” Then he mouthed it again soundlessly, _thank you_ , while giving Jaehyun’s arm a squeeze.

“Bye Jaehyun!” said Joy with a wave of her black nails.

“Bye, guys,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta put a hand on Kun’s shoulder and said, “Seriously, the reading. Fill me in.”

“What’s in it for me?” said Kun.

Yuta felt in his pocket as they climbed the steps. “I have…gum?”

“What flavor?”

Jaehyun watched them go up the steps. At the top, they joined another group of students who were standing outside the doors. Yuta looked over his shoulder. He smiled when he saw Jaehyun.

Jaehyun waved. Yuta blew him a kiss—or hurled it, really, like a stage actor miming a Frisbee toss—and Jaehyun laughed. Then Yuta turned around and went inside.

Jaehyun stood there for a little while, letting the heat stick to his skin and the breeze draw it away in turns. He had to get the train to the greenhouse soon; his shift started in a half hour. But he didn’t want to leave the place Yuta was in just yet. Plus, he was still processing the conversation they’d had. Yuta thought he looked like a model. Well, that wasn’t surprising, Yuta had said as much to his face before. The surprising part was that Yuta had also told his law school friends Jaehyun looked like a model. Jaehyun picked his bag up and started to walk down the street. Yuta was having a whole lot of fun with this fake boyfriends thing. More fun than Jaehyun was having, that was for sure.

Jaehyun _was_ kind of having fun, though. Yeah, he felt like he’d been socked in the chest every time Yuta or one of their friends mentioned them being in love, but it also felt…well, good.

He was still thinking about the fact that it felt good, and trying to decide whether it felt more good or exhausting, when he opened the door to the apartment after work and smelled food cooking. He looked down at the bag of Vietnamese takeout he’d bought. Yuta stuck his head out of the kitchen.

“Jaehyun!” he said. “I have a surprise!”

“Yeah, me too,” said Jaehyun, holding up the takeout bag.

Yuta’s smile went down and his eyebrows went up. “Oh, no,” he said, “I made dinner for you.”

“I bought dinner for you,” said Jaehyun, starting to laugh.

Yuta pinched the bridge of his nose. Then they just stood there laughing in the doorways opposite each other. Jaehyun sat down in the entryway. He loved little moments like this. He loved Yuta so much.

“All right,” said Yuta, coming over to pick up the takeout bag, “two dinners. Two dinners. One now, one in four hours.”

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun, kicking off his shoes.

Yuta was still giggling as he went back into the kitchen. “What is this? Pho?”

Jaehyun raised his voice so it would carry into the kitchen. “Yeah, and fried rice. What did you make?”

“Curry. What do you want first?”

“How long until the curry is done?”

“Maybe 10?”

“Let’s wait for the curry.”

“Okay, I’ll put this in the fridge.”

Jaehyun stacked his shoes on the low shelf inside the door. Then he crossed the living room, trailing his fingers along the leaves of the philodendron and the peace lily on the shelf. They looked happy in the sunlight streaming through the window, even if it would only be here a few minutes.

“What kind of curry?” said Jaehyun as he came into the kitchen.

“Chicken,” said Yuta, moving things around in the fridge to make room for the takeout.

Jaehyun looked at the table, gasped, and covered his mouth with his hands.

Yuta looked at him. Then he said, “Oh yeah! Oh my god, I forgot I had an actual surprise for you, not just dinner!”

Jaehyun stared at the tiny plastic pot on the table, at the pink and green leaves rising out of it. “Is that _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_?” he whispered.

“I…have no idea.” Yuta was shutting the refrigerator door. He ran to the table, grabbed the plant, and held it out to Jaehyun with both hands like a letter. “It’s a sunrise succulent! I know you said you wanted another succulent, and I thought you would like the pink leaves…”

“Yuta, holy shit, I’ve wanted one of these since I lived in the States,” said Jaehyun, taking it from him and turning it around. “I thought they didn’t have them in Korea.”

“Really?” said Yuta, hands clasped behind his back now. “Wow. I have great taste then.”

“Yes,” said Jaehyun, “you do. Oh my god. Look at the pink.”

“I knew you’d love the pink,” said Yuta, beaming.

Jaehyun lowered the succulent. “Wait, why…?”

“Yeah, so,” said Yuta, “today was a pretty crazy episode in our”—he let out a clumsy laugh—“you know, our whole fake dating escapade, and I wanted to thank you for taking it all in stride and everything. You’re truly Operation Yujae’s MVP.”

“Operation Yujae?” said Jaehyun.

“Hyuck came up with it,” said Yuta. “Not the operation part, but the Yujae part.”

“That’s why you got me an _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_?” said Jaehyun. “Yuta, you didn’t have to do that. This whole thing is fun.”

Yuta blinked prettily. “It’s fun? I thought it was turning into a pain in the ass, a little bit.”

“No,” said Jaehyun. “I mean, it’s a pain in the ass when you make me take three hundred pictures of you, but you do that anyway.”

“Oh, ha ha,” said Yuta, turning around to stir the curry.

“But messing with Johnny and listening to your friends tell me I’m good-looking,” Jaehyun said, “I mean, I’ll take it. You don’t have to cook an elaborate dinner or anything. Let alone track down and buy _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_.”

“That really just rolls off your tongue, huh,” said Yuta.

“Don’t you think it’s fun?” Jaehyun said before he could stop himself.

Yuta put the lid back on the curry pot. “It is fun, right?”

“Yeah, it’s fun,” said Jaehyun eagerly.

The rice cooker dinged. Yuta went to it and turned a knob. He was smiling. “No, yeah, it is. It’s lowkey funny. Except when Johnny’s yelling at us.”

“Then it’s hilarious,” said Jaehyun, stroking the plump leaves of the sunrise succulent.

“Yeah, true.”

Jaehyun watered the four plants in the kitchen and the eight plants in the living room, bringing the new succulent with him so they could all be introduced. The evening sun was just dipping below the roof of the building opposite the apartment. Jaehyun’s heart was all filled up. The room was humid enough to make his _Codariocalyx motorius_ slowly bobble its leaves, which he hadn’t seen it do in a week, and he had a brand-new _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_ to care for, and Yuta was in the next room spooning rice and curry onto plates for the two of them. And fake-dating him was fun. He’d said so. They’d both said so.

Maybe the next two weeks wouldn’t be too much of a mess after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!!!!!! thank you for reading the first chapter of perpetual summer!!! i hope you had fun ^^ if you'd like to read more, i'll be posting a chapter a day at midnight kst all week, until 00:00 on sunday when i'll post the last two chapters together! hope to see you then!! :)


	2. Chapter 2

It turned out that Donghyuck, of all people, didn’t need any convincing at all to embrace Jaehyun and Yuta’s fake relationship. In fact, he was even more enthusiastic about Yuta and Jaehyun dating than Jaehyun’s mother was.

Jaehyun’s mom had just dropped off a huge pan of galbijjim at their apartment. Jaehyun had spent most of the visit glaring at Yuta when his mom wasn’t looking. She was gone now, and they were sitting on the living room floor eating and watching an anime when they heard the knocking on the front door. It was Hyuck’s knock. He had a thing about showing up at people’s places’ unannounced. He said his signature knock— _rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, BOOM BOOM BOOM_ —was the announcement.

“Damn it,” said Yuta. “I thought he wasn’t coming tonight anymore.”

“What does he want?” said Jaehyun.

“Probably your mom’s food. Hide it.”

Jaehyun grabbed Yuta’s plate off the coffee table and ran into the kitchen while Yuta went to the door. As Jaehyun sat down at the kitchen table, he heard the door open and Yuta say, “Didn’t you just text me you thought you couldn’t make it anymore?”

“Something smells great. What are you eating?”

Donghyuck was in the kitchen two seconds later, trailed by Mark and Yuta. He saw Jaehyun and said, “Congratulations.”

Jaehyun was holding the sunrise succulent in his hands. He looked down at it. “Oh, thanks. Yuta got it for me a couple days ago. It’s called _Anacampseros_ —”

“No. What? I meant congratulations on your new relationship. When I tell you I was thrilled,” said Donghyuck, lifting foil off the galbijjim, “I mean truly, deeply, profoundly thrilled. Mark, wasn’t I thrilled?”

Mark, his elbow on Yuta’s shoulder, said, “He got so excited, he smacked my phone out of my hand. My screen is cracked now.”

“I said I’d pay to get it repaired!” Donghyuck said. “Anyway, you guys have to tell me everything. How did it happen? What did you say? How did Jaehyun react when you told him you wanted to be his boyfriend?”

“Hang on,” said Yuta, “you believe us?”

Donghyuck frowned. “Why wouldn’t we believe you? And why do you guys have so much galbijjim?”

“Jaehyun’s mom brought it over,” said Yuta. “You haven’t heard your brother raging about how we’re faking it for clout or something?”

“Can we have some?” asked Mark. At the same time Donghyuck, who was already opening the dish cabinet, said, “ _Are_ you faking it for clout?”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun told Mark. Yuta said, “No!”

“Yeah, as in, you are faking it?” said Donghyuck, getting out two plates and beckoning to Mark.

“No, I was telling you to eat the galbijjim,” said Jaehyun.

“Thank god,” said Donghyuck, holding a plate while Mark scooped galbijjim onto it, “because I’ve been waiting forever for this. You don’t understand. Well, I guess you do understand, you were waiting for it too, but I swear, I knew you two would end up together eventually, I told Mark YEARS ago. Right Mark?”

“He knew you would be together before he knew _we_ would be together,” said Mark. “Hyuck, other plate.”

“Wait,” said Jaehyun, “what do you mean, you knew?”

Donghyuck gestured at them with the full plate before switching it with the other. “What do you mean, what do I mean? I saw this coming from a mile away. I’m very skilled at reading vibes, if I do say so myself, and I do say so. And y’all have idiots-in-love vibes. As far as I was concerned, it was always just a matter of time.”

“Matter of time,” said Mark, “smatter of rhyme.”

“Oh, nice,” said Donghyuck.

“Patter of…”

“Patter of prime?”

“Patter of prime time!” Mark said, and they high-fived.

“Are you guys going to tell us about the plans for the fair, or did you just come here to play your SoundCloud rapper game and eat our food?” said Yuta.

“Splatter of sly slime!” said Donghyuck, giving no sign that he was aware Yuta had spoken.

“ _OHH!_ ” said Mark.

“GUYS!” said Yuta.

Donghyuck said, “Do you have rice?”

Yuta gave him a flat look. Jaehyun pointed at the rice cooker.

While Mark got rice for the two of them, Donghyuck resumed his monologue. “And I could not be more relieved that you’re finally a thing, I mean, I was afraid I’d have to wait till I was old and hairy to see you get together. Even when you and Johnny made the bet on Wednesday, I never thought in a million years you would win.”

“Did you just say old and hairy?” said Mark.

“I don’t know, don’t old men get, like, nose hair?”

Jaehyun said, “Everyone has nose hair, Hyuck.”

Donghyuck wrinkled his nose and said, “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but not everyone does, and it sounds to me like you’re one of the unlucky ones.”

Jaehyun looked at Yuta in alarm. Yuta said, “He’s lying.”

“So what I’m saying is that thank god you’re competitive,” Hyuck continued, pulling out a chair for Mark to sit down in, “because you might never have confessed otherwise.”

“Confessed?” Jaehyun said.

“Well, yeah,” said Donghyuck, “I mean, isn’t that why you’re dating him?”

“Oh. Yeah,” said Jaehyun.

“So, tell us,” said Hyuck, “how did it happen?”

Yuta’s mouth was twisted with one cheek sucked in. He didn’t look like he’d be able to talk without breaking down in laughter. He nodded at Jaehyun, like _go ahead_. Jaehyun ran his fingers over the leaves of the succulent.

“Yeah, uh,” Jaehyun said, “he said to meet him at the Gongcha and that he needed to talk to me. And then he asked me if I wanted to be his boyfriend.”

Hyuck, who had found chopsticks somewhere, stopped stuffing his face to say, “That’s it?”

“Uhhh,” said Jaehyun, “I…cried?”

“You CRIED?” Hyuck screamed.

“Why are you telling us that?” said Mark.

“I mean, didn’t Hyuck want to hear dramatic details?” said Jaehyun. Yuta was staring at him, one hand over his laughing mouth. Jaehyun shrugged.

“YES,” said Hyuck, waving the chopsticks wildly, “that’s EXACTLY what I want to hear! Tell me more! Why did you cry? What were you thinking in that moment?”

“I was thinking,” said Jaehyun, “I was thinking…”

They all leaned in, wide-eyed. Yuta’s laughter had ceased, though his hand was still covering his mouth.

“About how I’d been hoping he would say that my whole life,” said Jaehyun, “but now that he was saying it, I couldn’t believe it.”

Yuta’s gaze softened.

“Oh my god, look at them,” Donghyuck whispered.

“All right,” said Yuta, “are you satisfied now that you’ve made my boyfriend admit he cried when I asked him out?”

Mark, legs crossed pretzel-style in the chair and mouth full of rice, shook his head. Donghyuck leaned on the back of Mark’s chair and said, “Obviously not. Now _you_ have to tell us how long you’ve liked him.”

“Me?” said Yuta.

“No,” said Donghyuck, “I was talking to the plant. Yes, you.”

“Oh. How long I liked him for?”

“Yes,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta looked at him and said, as if to double check, “You’ve liked me your whole life?”

Jaehyun nodded.

“Mm.” Yuta gestured at Jaehyun. “Me too.”

“You’ve liked him your whole life too?” said Mark. “That’s so cute.”

“Cute,” said Hyuck, “but boring. I need more. When did you _realize_ you liked him?”

Yuta said, “When did I realize? I guess when we saw each other again after being apart for a few years.”

“Awww,” said Mark. Hyuck said, “When you went to college?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta.

“When exactly did you realize? Like, approximately what month?” Hyuck said.

“Okay Hyuck,” said Mark, “stop grilling them now, for real.”

“What? Why!”

“You sound like the police questioning a crime scene witness.” Mark put his plate down on the table. “And we have to talk to them about the fair before we go home.”

Donghyuck clicked his tongue, pointing at Mark. “He thinks this is good cop bad cop and he has to be the good cop. Mark, do you ever consider that there doesn’t have to be a good cop?”

“Mark couldn’t be the bad cop even if he tried,” said Yuta.

“Hey!” said Mark, bringing his hand down on the table rather feebly. “Be quiet…suspect!”

“No, no,” said Donghyuck. “Like this.” He grabbed Yuta’s collar. “Shut your trap, punk, or I’ll rip your fucking eyeballs out!”

“Eyeballs?” said Mark. “That’s disgusting.”

“They’re right,” said Jaehyun, “you don’t have it in you.”

“As if _you_ do,” said Mark.

“Or like this,” said Hyuck, taking the succulent out of Jaehyun’s hands and stroking the top leaf. “Awfully nice plant you got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

“Give it back,” said Jaehyun.

“You’ll get your plant back,” said Hyuck, “when you tell me what I need to know, and only then.”

“Wow, you _are_ good at this,” said Mark in awe.

Jaehyun swiped for the succulent, but Hyuck danced out of his reach. Jaehyun was afraid that if he tried to take the pot back by force, the plant would get hurt. “What? What do you still want to know?”

“Hmmmm.” Hyuck tapped the leaf. “Okay, just tell me this. Why didn’t you guys get together until now?”

Jaehyun and Yuta looked at each other across the table. Jaehyun couldn’t read Yuta’s face; he wasn’t getting any messages from him, no _any ideas_? blink, no _I’ll take this one_ nod. Jaehyun was about to say something along the lines of “ _it just never came up_ ” when Yuta said, “Because I wasn’t brave enough to tell him how I really felt.”

There was a pang in hearing the words, like looking in a mirror and not liking what you see. Jaehyun grabbed for the succulent and Hyuck stepped sideways. Mark said, “It be like that sometimes,” and Hyuck said, “Kind of cute though, like, given that you’re together now. Tragically cute. Cutely tragic?”

“Well I,” said Jaehyun, “I wasn’t brave enough to tell you how I felt either.”

“Huh? Yeah,” said Yuta, “but I should have said someth—”

“But was it really the _brave_ thing to do?” said Jaehyun. “Saying something? Or was it kind of, like, reckless, honestly? Telling me you wanted something from me that you didn’t know if I could give, without thinking about how it might affect me or our friendship.”

Yuta squinted one eye and said, “Huh?”

“Yeah, what are you talking about?” said Hyuck. “Being in love with someone isn’t a crime.”

“I thought you wanted to be bad cop,” said Mark.

“What?” said Hyuck.

“That sounds like something good cop would say.”

“Mark, we’re not interrogating anymore.”

“Oh. We’re not?”

“Guys, so, can you say what you were going to tell us about your fundraising project?” said Jaehyun. “Because I’ve been waiting all week to find out whether I can man a booth at the fair.”

“Hang on,” said Yuta, “what were you just—? Wouldn’t hiding the truth be worse than telling you? Wouldn’t it be, like, holding back something that could change both of us for the better? Wouldn’t you deserve to know?”

“No, yeah,” said Jaehyun dizzily, “I was just trying to help you justify not telling me for so long. I don’t know.”

“Oh,” said Yuta, “okay, yeah, thanks.”

“Well you’re together now, so what does it matter?” said Hyuck, dropping the sunrise succulent on the table. Jaehyun snatched it up as Hyuck said, “Anyway, I’d love to sit and listen to you two chatterboxes rave some more about your blossoming love, truly, I would, but Mark and I are busy beans, so if you’ll allow me to get down to business…”

Yuta said, “ _You_ asked _us_ —”

“Do I get a booth or not?” said Jaehyun.

Donghyuck pointed his fingers at Jaehyun like a gun and said, “Better than a booth.”

Mark snorted.

“Okay,” said Donghyuck, “bigger than a booth, at least.”

“What does that mean?” said Jaehyun.

“It means dunk tank,” said Hyuck.

Jaehyun sat there slack-jawed. Yuta threw his head back in laughter and clapped his hands. “That’s my final offer,” said Hyuck.

“You can’t do this to me,” said Jaehyun. “The _dunk tank?_ I’ll…I’ll… I don’t even get the chance to make a bet to get out of it? Johnny and Yuta did!”

“Look,” said Hyuck, “Johnny and Yuta were obligated to work the fair, because Johnny’s my brother and Yuta basically raised me into the beautiful gay butterfly I am today, but you’re not required to help, Jaehyun. If you don’t want the dunk tank, you can just sit with Yuta at the cotton candy station.”

“Aww, I helped raise you into a gay butterfly?” said Yuta.

“I wanted a booth of my own!” said Jaehyun.

“And you’ll have something even better,” said Donghyuck. “The dunk tank is the best gig in the fair. Just think about it. You won’t sweat all day.”

“Gay butterfly,” said Mark, “bay mutter bye.”

“That’s terrible,” said Donghyuck.

“I know. It was a cry for help.”

“Hyuck,” Jaehyun said, “isn’t there a ring toss or a water gun game I can do?”

“Oh,” said Donghyuck, snapping his fingers, “listen to this. Slay, glitter guy.”

Mark’s jaw dropped. Donghyuck raised his hands in the air. Mark said, “That’s so risky. I love it.”

“Got another one,” said Hyuck. “Say, don’t stutter, spy!”

Mark shook his head slowly. “Incredible.”

“There’s a whole extra word,” said Yuta.

“That’s what makes it genius,” said Hyuck.

“Donghyuck, if you don’t let me do the ring toss…” said Jaehyun.

“Okay,” said Mark, “glazed nutter pie.”

Donghyuck said, “Not bad,” while Yuta said, “Ew.”

Donghyuck stared at Yuta. “Get your head out of the gutter!”

“Gutter!” said Mark. “Play gutter die!”

Hyuck said, “LIKE THE PENNYWISE MOVIE?”

“YES!”

Yuta leaned his head into his hand while Mark and Hyuck shouted increasingly ridiculous phrases back and forth at increasing volumes. “I think,” Yuta said, “you’re going to have to do the dunk tank.”

“Why can’t I get a boyfriend and trade with someone else, like you did?” Jaehyun said.

Yuta smiled. “Because you already have a boyfriend.”

Jaehyun tried a deadpan stare on him, but Yuta held his gaze blithely, and Jaehyun had to look away. Mark was in stitches over something Hyuck had said. Hyuck said, “May butter fry?” and beamed when Mark laughed harder.

“That was harder than talking to Johnny,” said Jaehyun after Mark and Hyuck left. “And they _believe_ us.”

“I know,” said Yuta, washing dishes at the sink. “You really cranked your creativity up to like 700.”

“Well,” said Jaehyun, bringing the empty galbijjim pan to him, “so did you. You’ve gotten a lot more convincing than the other day.”

Yuta batted his eyelashes at Jaehyun. “You think so, baby? Thanks, you’re not so bad yourself.”

Jaehyun gritted his teeth. Yuta had gotten in the habit of joke-flirting with him every time they talked about the fake relationship when no one was around. It would have been insufferable if it weren’t so cute. “Well don’t, like, revert back to the cheesy stuff. If you do that, we’ll lose Hyuck and Mark.”

“Nah.” Yuta rinsed a plate and handed it to Jaehyun to dry. “Even if we lost them, I’d find a way to bring them back.”

“I hope so.”

Yuta kicked Jaehyun’s foot. Jaehyun kicked him back. Yuta splashed him with soapy dishwater. Jaehyun yelled and jumped away.

“I always find a way, sweetie,” said Yuta with a dazzling grin. “It’s the lawyer in me.”

Of course. Yuta was a lawyer. He was an actor. He was born to slap on that polished smile and argue his case. Jaehyun rarely forgot that about him—Yuta rarely gave him the chance to—but he did have to remind himself of it when he was at the greenhouse one day and Yuta, hair pulled back in what could barely be called a ponytail and smile as heartwrenching as ever, burst in shouting, “HEY BABY! WE’RE GOING TO THE BEACH!”

The greenhouse was empty except for Taeil helping a middle-aged woman choose a hanging plant for her sunroom. They both looked over their shoulders at the sound of Yuta’s voice. Jaehyun gave Taeil an apologetic grin and waved across the rows of shrubs and trees. Before he could even lower his hand, Yuta’s arms were wrapped around him.

“Hey,” said Jaehyun, trying to elbow Yuta away, with little success, since his arms were trapped. “I have a dirty shovel and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Yuta let him go, pouting. “What a sweet way to greet your wonderful boyfriend who came all the way to see you at work.”

He was still talking louder than he needed to. “Yuta,” said Jaehyun, “tone it down. No one’s here, it’s just my boss and some lady.”

Yuta looked around him at Taeil and the customer, then smiled. “I know. Have I ever told you you look kinda sexy in the greenhouse apron and the gloves?”

Jaehyun tossed the shovel onto a shelf and wiped his brow. The greenhouse was cool today, but he was sweating. “Yes. You have actually. Thanks.”

“How about me?” said Yuta, posing with the emerald tree next to him. “How do I look today?”

Jaehyun couldn’t tell if he was supposed to play along with the flirting. “Beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

Yuta giggled. “Thanks. What’s that?”

“An emerald tree,” said Jaehyun. “ _Radermachera sinica_. Also, China doll tree or serpent tree.”

“Serpent tree? Sick.”

“Its flowers bloom for one night a year, and then they die at sunrise.”

“That’s so fucking metal.”

“What were you talking about when you came in?”

“The beach trip,” said Yuta.

“Beach trip?”

“You haven’t looked at the chat at all, have you?”

Jaehyun pulled off a glove. “I can’t be on my phone, I’m literally digging in dirt.”

Yuta nodded at Jaehyun’s phone as he pulled it out of his pocket. “Well look now.”

There were upwards of sixty unread messages in the chat. Jaehyun scrolled up. “ _SURPRISE_ ” Doyoung had texted earlier this afternoon with a bunch of palm tree emojis.

Mark: “ _Surprise what_ ”

Johnny: “ _surprise early birthday present for donghyuck_ ”

Johnny, again: “ _doyoung and i found a house in incheon to rent for the weekend and we’re all going_ ”

Donghyuck: “ _PRESENT???? FOR ME????????_ ”

Doyoung: “ _it’s right on the beach! you can see the ocean from the kitchen!!_ ”

Mark: “ _NO WAY_ ”

Donghyuck: “ _For everyone?????_ ”

Johnny: “ _yeah 3 bedrooms 5 beds 2 days 2 nights, clear ur schedules_ ”

Yuta: “ _HANG ON CAN JAEHYUN & I COME??_”

Doyoung: “ _yes duh that’s why we used this chat_ ”

Donghyuck: “ _THANK YOU I LOVE YOU SO MUCH MY BROTHER AND MY DOYOUNG_ ”

Yuta: “ _I ALSO LOVE YOU DH’S BROTHER & DH’S DOYOUNG_”

Jaehyun looked up and said, “But I work on Saturday.”

“Get someone to take your shift,” said Yuta. “Haven’t you covered for that guy Jungwoo like three times this summer?”

“Yeah, but he might have plans this weekend,” said Jaehyun. “It’s already Tuesday.”

“So? Get him to cancel his plans,” said Yuta. “You canceled dinner with me to cover for him that one time.”

“But you’re,” said Jaehyun, fumbling his phone a little, “we, we have dinner every—I’m sorry. Were you mad? I should’ve just…”

Yuta giggled. “Jaehyun, chill, I wasn’t mad. You were helping him out. But now you cash in those favors, right?”

“I guess,” said Jaehyun.

“Text him now.”

Yuta put a hand on Jaehyun’s shoulder and watched while Jaehyun texted Jungwoo—“too politely,” Yuta said—to ask if Jungwoo might possibly be able to cover his shift on Saturday. Then Jaehyun went back to the chat and said, “ _yo johnny and doyo thank u so much!!! let me make sure i can get off work this weekend and if i can im in!!_ ”

“Did you see the part about how it’s right on the beach?” said Yuta.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun, and his phone vibrated. He looked down to see another text from Johnny.

“ _can’t get off work…what a perfect excuse for when ur not actually dating ur best friend and u don’t want to have to pretend that u are for 48 hours straight!_ ”

“Ughh,” Yuta said and pulled out his own phone.

Jaehyun was still trying to think of what to say when a message from Yuta came in. “ _NO of course he’s coming. we’re in love_ ”

Jaehyun looked at him. Yuta said, “Come on, back me up!”

“Uh,” said Jaehyun, “okay,” and he texted, “ _shut up johnny that joke is a week old_ ”

Johnny only said, “ _yeah the joke IS a week old when are u gna drop it_ ”

Doyoung said, “ _johnny i am literally on my knees begging you to let them live_ ”

Donghyuck sent some heart eyes and said, “ _can’t wait to see my godparents’ relationship playing out in real time!!!!!! best birthday present ever!!!!_ ”

Jaehyun said, “Yuta, if we go this weekend, we’re going to have to work overtime.”

Yuta grinned at him. “Whatever do you mean, O my beloved heart’s companion?”

As Jaehyun rolled his eyes, he received two texts. One of them was from Jungwoo. “ _sure jaehyun i got u ʕ•́ᴥ•̀ʔ_ _っbtw can you cover for me next thursday? my parents are coming into town (_ _◡́._ _◡̀)(^_ _◡^ )_ ”

The other text was from Johnny. It said, “ _yeah can’t wait for them to not kiss the entire weekend so yall can finally realize i’m right_ ”

“Oh, god,” Jaehyun muttered.

“Well,” said Yuta, “looks like we’re going to have to kiss after all.”

Jaehyun was about to ask him why he sounded so cheerful about it when Taeil called from the cash register, “Jaehyun, you’ve still got a half hour left.”

Jaehyun spun around. “Yeah—sorry. Sorry Taeil.”

“I don’t care if you talk to your boyfriend,” Taeil said with his arms folded, “but keep your hands busy so I have something to pay you for.”

Jaehyun grabbed the shovel and began to fill soil in around the repotted plant. “Sure. Thank you.”

“Gloves,” said Taeil and Yuta at the same time.

“Ah,” said Jaehyun. He dropped the shovel, pulled his gloves out of his apron, struggled to put them on because they were both watching him, picked up the shovel, and dug back into the soil. Finally, Taeil took a spray bottle and went to mist the air plants.

“Anyway, BEACH IN FOUR DAYS,” Yuta scream-whispered.

“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta shook his head, starting to say, “Sure it…” but then he changed directions halfway through the sentence. “Why?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Jaehyun, dumping shovelfuls of soil into the pot. “What if someone catches me off-guard and I break character?”

While the thought of _not_ breaking character for an entire weekend was actually more intimidating than making a mistake and getting caught, he didn’t know how to articulate why this was, so he just nodded when Yuta said, “Hey, don’t worry, I won’t let you. I’ll do all the work, okay? You don’t have to worry, I got this.”

He believed Yuta, that Yuta had this, but it didn’t make him feel any better. Instead, it only made the prospect of this weekend more daunting. Maybe there was some thrill in there, too, if Jaehyun was being honest with himself. Maybe, against his better judgment, he was looking forward to a whole weekend of pretending to be Yuta’s boyfriend. And maybe that made him even more nervous, and maybe he couldn’t tell the nervousness from the excitement because it was all one big shiny overwhelming feeling.

The thought that they might kiss at some point, borne on that same shiny wave of anxious anticipation, came back to Jaehyun repeatedly for the rest of the week. He pushed it away—they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t—and then it came back and he glanced at it out of the corner of his eye, maybe they could, maybe they would, what if they did? No, they couldn’t. Yuta hadn’t mentioned it since he came to the greenhouse on Tuesday. Maybe he had forgotten about it. The idea was simultaneously a relief and a disappointment.

It wasn’t until late Friday night that Jaehyun found he was wrong, and Yuta hadn’t forgotten about it, or if he had, it was only temporarily. Jaehyun was on the floor, checking his _Ficus lyrata_ for mealybugs, while Yuta and the boys talked about tomorrow in the Kakao chat. Jaehyun saw Hyuck say something about “ _couples weekend_ ” and Johnny tag Jaehyun and Yuta with a kissy-face emoji. Yuta sighed loudly from his chair and said, almost more to himself or to the room than Jaehyun, “These sickos are going to stop at nothing until they see us make out.”

Fuck. “No, they won’t. I mean, yes they will. Stop at nothing? They’ll stop.”

Yuta said with another dramatic sigh, “We might as well just kiss now so it’s not weird this weekend—”

“Yuta, I’m not going kiss you!” Jaehyun said.

There was a soft, quick silence, like a butterfly flexing its wings. Then Yuta said, “Sorry. You don’t have to. I was, like, joking, mostly.”

Something had just gone terribly wrong, and Jaehyun wasn’t sure what. “I mean, like, not that I don’t—it’s not that I wouldn’t—I mean, it’s not that I don’t think you’re—”

“No,” said Yuta, holding his phone close to his face, “I know what you meant. Forget it, they’ll get over themselves.”

Jaehyun wondered if he had hurt Yuta’s feelings. A sharp sort of regret was coursing through him. He could feel himself on the edge of something.

“You know what,” said Jaehyun, “no, why not? Let’s try.”

Yuta looked up. “Try…kissing? Now?”

“Sure,” said Jaehyun. “Like you said. So it’s not awkward this weekend.”

“I thought you didn’t want to,” said Yuta. He was frozen on the chair.

Jaehyun _didn’t_ want to. But more than that, he did. He wanted to so, so badly.

“I just,” said Jaehyun, “I don’t know, I thought it wasn’t necessary, you know? We might not even have to kiss this weekend, right? But if we do…well, better to be prepared and everything…”

His voice was getting higher, and jumpier, and he swallowed instead of continuing. Yuta was looking at him with a trace of a smile. He got up and tossed his phone onto the chair. Suddenly it hit Jaehyun that he’d just agreed to kiss him. He’d practically talked Yuta into it.

“All right,” Yuta said, “if you don’t think it’s a dumb idea.”

He padded across the carpet in socks that looked like dog faces. He crossed his legs on the floor in front of Jaehyun. As he did, Jaehyun became suffocatingly aware of him—his roots showing underneath the platinum blond dye, the divot in the muscles of his shoulder, the slight curve of his eyelashes.

“I don’t,” Jaehyun choked out several moments too late. “Think it’s dumb. A dumb idea.”

Yuta laughed, the kind of laugh that was only there to replace words. Jaehyun’s heart was beating so hard it almost hurt. He looked down and shifted his legs on the carpet to give himself a second to pull it together.

Yuta said, “Okay, so.”

“Uh huh,” said Jaehyun, nodding quickly.

Yuta glanced into Jaehyun’s eyes and glanced away, grinning. “So we should, just like…”

“Right,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta said, “You were right, it’s a good thing we’re getting the awkward part over with now.”

“Right,” said Jaehyun, “exactly.”

Yuta blinked at Jaehyun’s lips a few times. His eyes weren’t darting around anymore. “Okay,” he said, very quietly, as if to himself.

Jaehyun thought his head was going to pop like a balloon if he sat here waiting for one more second. He took a fast, deep breath and tilted his head to the left.

At the same time, Yuta tilted his head to the right. Their noses were about to collide. They balked.

“Ah,” said Yuta. He was laughing.

Jaehyun tried to laugh too. He angled his face to the right, but Yuta was tilting his face the other way as well. They both leaned back.

“Okay,” said Yuta, still laughing, “just…”

“Yeah, why don’t you…” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah, okay, okay. I’ll, yeah.”

Jaehyun closed his eyes. He tried to breathe. He realized he was terrified, as if he were waiting for lightning to strike him.

But Yuta’s lips weren’t like lightning. They were soft. Cool at first, then warm. They thawed every cell in Jaehyun’s body in an instant.

Jaehyun wasn’t sure how long the first kiss lasted. He only knew that one second he was kissing Yuta, kissing him gracefully, painfully, gorgeously slowly, almost without moving at all; and the next second, their lips were separating, like a paintbrush lifting off a canvas or a wave removing itself from sand. And Yuta was looking at him, with that improbable smile, the eye-crinkly one that belonged to the sun. Jaehyun wasn’t sure why he was seeing it now.

“Okay,” Yuta said. He was whispering, but the sound seemed impossibly loud. “Good start.”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun tried to say. He couldn’t make much of a sound at all.

Yuta giggled. Jaehyun understood right then. This was entertaining to Yuta. It was funny to him. It was nothing to him.

Jaehyun felt his heart break almost physically, like a snap or a crack in his chest, when he met Yuta’s next kiss halfway. It hurt. It hurt like being crushed between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Or maybe the force was just Yuta, and the object was the wall, and Jaehyun was pinned between them, and as much as it ached, he didn’t want the pressure to lift. He had kissed Yuta with his mouth open this time, because Yuta had kissed him when his lips were parted, because they had come together faster than before, and they had to balance each other’s momentum. Yuta felt exactly like Jaehyun had always imagined he must feel, and yet Jaehyun had never imagined anything like this. He had never imagined that Yuta could feel so immediate. So close. Like the lines between them were blurred.

Yuta’s hand was warm when it covered his, and Jaehyun turned his own hand over, threading their fingers.

As if that were a signal, the kiss drifted and collapsed. It took Jaehyun a moment to realize Yuta had stopped kissing him. Now their faces were centimeters apart, and they were eye to eye.

They both breathed.

Yuta said, “Okay,” with some finality.

Jaehyun suddenly felt exhausted.

“Yeah,” he said.

He pulled his hand away from Yuta’s, realizing that he had intertwined their fingers when Yuta had probably only been trying to get his balance. Yuta looked down at their hands and back up at Jaehyun.

“Good,” said Jaehyun, “now it won’t be weird if we have to kiss this weekend.”

Yuta nodded. He was no longer smiling. He watched warily as Jaehyun stood up. He was so beautiful. His lips looked so red. Jaehyun needed to get out of there.

“Good?” said Jaehyun hoarsely.

Yuta smiled again. Just a normal smile now. He held out his hand to Jaehyun and said, “Yeah. Pull me up.”

Jaehyun took his wrist and helped him stand. As soon as Yuta was on his feet, he dropped Jaehyun’s hand. Jaehyun went around him to the kitchen.

“Get me some water,” Yuta called.

Jaehyun stood over the sink and let the water run. His skin was flushed all over him. He closed his eyes, running the tip of his tongue over his lower lip. His chest still ached.

When he came back into the living room with two cups of water, Yuta was back in his chair. He took his cup from Jaehyun and said, “Thanks. If Johnny doesn’t believe we’re dating after this, I’ll deck his ass myself.”

Jaehyun didn’t know if Yuta was thanking him for the water, or for practicing kissing with him. “Yeah,” said Jaehyun, “please do.”

“Mm.” A second passed and Yuta added, “I never knew you were such a good kisser.”

Jaehyun almost couldn’t look at him. When he did, he saw Yuta wearing a pretty, breezy, cheeky smile, like he couldn’t imagine that there could be anything to worry about in the world.

“You…too,” Jaehyun managed. “I’ll see you in a couple…hours.”

“Okay,” said Yuta. Jaehyun went down the hall to his room.

He had been looking at his phone without seeing it for about twenty minutes when Yuta texted him.

_hey are you ok?_

Jaehyun couldn’t remember the last time Yuta texted him when they were both in the apartment. He always came and knocked on Jaehyun’s door.

_wdym? im great_ , Jaehyun replied with the least suspicious emoji he could think of.

_yeah? bcs if us kissing was like weird.? you can tell me_

 _no!! its not weird at all,_ Jaehyun answered as quickly as he could. Then he said, _i mean do u feel weird about it or anything?_

Yuta typed for a while and said, _nooo haha i just wanted to make sure you were ok when you went to your room rly fast_

As Jaehyun typed a reply, Yuta messaged again. _like if i’m pushing the fake dating thing too far,, let me know and we’ll just stop lol_

_hahaha no dont worry,_ Jaehyun answered _, i only came to my room because im tired. not from fake dating tho lol thats just getting fun_

Yuta sent back some emojis and said, _ok thanks baby~ i still owe ya_

Jaehyun sent a meme that he hoped conveyed affirmation. Then he put down his phone and stared at the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi again! thanks for coming back/staying to read chapter 2!! sorry to leave you on a chapter break where jaehyun is stressed lol but jaehyun is a stressed man in general  
> chapter 3 will be posted tomorrow at this time :D as always thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

The beach house was smaller than it looked in pictures, and further away from Incheon proper than it had looked on the map. Jaehyun could not have been more pleased with these developments. As they drove the rental car down the lonely winding road and Johnny groused about how long it had been since they’d seen a seven-eleven, the squat house finally came into view among the grasses and Doyoung said, “I’d rather be in a little cottage on our own than be in a big house somewhere busy.”

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun.

“It looks cute,” said Yuta, sticking his head out the window.

“Can anyone see the ocean?” said Mark.

“I just see grass,” said Hyuck.

They parked in the sandy drive and grabbed bags out of the car. The house certainly looked like a cottage from the outside with its coarse vines and white stucco, but inside it was open and bright, with silvery morning light coming through glass doors and a skylight over the attached living room and kitchen. Jaehyun dropped his bag and peered down a hallway while Hyuck and Mark oohed and ahhed over the skylight.

“All right, so three bedrooms,” said Johnny, “five beds. Yuta and Jaehyun, you’d love to take the single bed, wouldn’t you?”

Yuta stuck his tongue out while Jaehyun said, “Johnny, we’ve literally been together for almost two weeks. When are you going to stop?”

Johnny repeated the question’s rhythm back at him in gibberish words. Hyuck said, “Why can’t we take the single bed?”

“Seniority?” Jaehyun said.

“No,” said Johnny. “I just want to make this fake relationship as inconvenient as possible for you two.”

“What- _EVER!_ ” said Yuta, spinning. His hand found Jaehyun’s wrist without looking at it and pulled. “Come on, hot boy, let’s find our single bed!”

“Can’t wait to hear y’all getting it on through these thin walls,” Johnny shouted after them as they went down the hall. Mark made a barfing sound. Doyoung said, “ _Johnny!_ ” and Johnny said, “What? They’re not getting it on, it’s all fake!”

Doyoung said, “Over the fucking line, Johnny!” and Yuta yanked Jaehyun through a door that stood ajar, leaking blue-green light into the hall, and the sound seemed to fade away behind them.

One white queen bed sat in the center of the room. There was barely half a meter of space between it and the wall. But the window was wide, and the colors of the ocean shone through it.

“Ohhh,” Jaehyun said and went to the window. Yuta followed him. Jaehyun remembered that they were still holding hands. He pretended he hadn’t noticed. They stopped in front of the glass.

“Do you see that,” Jaehyun said.

A stripe of ocean rose beyond the high grasses. Effervescent clouds streaked across half of the sky. Even under their muted purplish reflection, the sea was green. There were few waves. The light had a fragile, wafted cast, as if it couldn’t make up its mind where it was coming from or where it was going.

Yuta raised his free hand and pushed on a lock. One windowpane slid open. Almost in an instant, Jaehyun felt warm air on his face. It felt and tasted like the sea.

Yuta said, “It’s just like when we were little.”

Something broke loose inside of Jaehyun, some tenderness left momentarily unguarded. He turned his face to Yuta. Yuta looked back at him. The waves shushed outside.

“Whew,” said Donghyuck’s voice.

They spun around, hands coming apart. Donghyuck and Mark stood in the hallway, bags at their feet. “Oh yeah,” said Donghyuck, “that’s real.”

Mark nodded solemnly. Donghyuck kicked his bag aside and threw himself onto the bed. Yuta said, several beats too late, “Of—of course it’s real!”

“I can see that, loverboy,” said Donghyuck.

“Go,” said Yuta, “bother Johnny and Doyoung or something. Can’t you see we’re having a moment here?”

“Johnny and Doyoung are fighting again,” said Mark, who had crossed his legs pretzel-style on the floor.

Jaehyun and Yuta exchanged frowns. Jaehyun said, “Again?”

“They’ve been getting into it a lot lately,” said Donghyuck, rolling onto his back. “Like, not _really_ getting into it, just spats.”

“I don’t hear anything now,” said Yuta.

“Maybe they stopped,” said Mark.

“And maybe they’ll start again in eight seconds,” Donghyuck said.

“Why?” said Jaehyun. “I’m confused.”

“You know how Johnny’s been all pissy lately,” said Donghyuck, folding his hands behind his head and looking at Jaehyun and Yuta upside-down. “He’s been in a bad mood ever since he lost the bet. And Doyoung’s been calling him out for it.”

“Doyoung’s been in a bad mood too,” said Mark.

“No,” said Donghyuck. “You think?”

“Well, I don’t know, but he seems tense,” said Mark.

Jaehyun met Yuta’s eyes and saw the _we’ll get to the bottom of this later_ look on his face. Jaehyun returned half a smile to say _I’m with you_. “Come on, let’s go look at the water.”

“With all that sand?” Donghyuck said. “No thank you.”

“What? You don’t like sand? Since when?” Mark said.

“Donghyuck, we’re literally at the beach,” said Yuta.

“Sand is like if someone decided to invent the itchiest itch machine imaginable,” said Donghyuck, “and then just dumped millions of metric tons of it all along the edges of the continents for no good reason at all.”

Yuta took Jaehyun’s hand again while Mark said, “Donghyuck, there is a good reason. It’s erosion,” and as Jaehyun followed Yuta out, he heard Donghyuck say, “You call erosion a good reason?”

They passed the bathroom and laundry room before coming into the kitchen again. It was empty, but Johnny’s phone was still on the counter. Yuta pointed at the half-open sliding door across the room.

They pushed the door open further. It led onto a bleached wooden deck. At the side were stairs that descended into the sand, where a thin line of ocean was just visible over the dune.

“You don’t have shoes on,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun said, “So?”

“Do you see those old ass planks? They’re practically shedding, you’ll get a splinter.”

“Carry me,” said Jaehyun.

“Fine,” said Yuta. “But if I drop you it’s not my fault.”

“You won’t drop me.”

Yuta squared his feet, and Jaehyun jumped onto his back. Yuta groaned, stumbling left and right.

“Stop the dramatics,” said Jaehyun.

“Dramatics?” said Yuta. “This isn’t dramatics. You’ll see dramatics when I drop you and you break your neck.”

“Yeah right,” said Jaehyun. Yuta’s center of gravity was stable. Jaehyun could feel it as surely as he could feel the warmth of Yuta’s back against his chest. “Go that way. I see footprints in the sand.”

“Easy on my neck,” said Yuta as he carried Jaehyun across the deck and down the steps, “you’re choking me.”

“Sorry.”

“What kind of grass is this?”

“Something from the _Ammophila_ genus, I think. Probably invasive.”

“Sounds devious.”

“Yeah. Maybe _Ammophila arenaria_ or _Ammophila baltica_.”

“I love it.”

“You should. Without it, the sand would drift and we’d lose arable land.”

“Jaehyunnie, Jaehyunnie. My own personal plantcyclopedia.”

“Glad to be of service.”

“Hey, wouldn’t it be creepy if these footprints weren’t Johnny and Doyoung’s?”

“Whose would they be then?”

“I don’t know. The sea-dwelling fish-human cryptid that’s going to pick us off one by one over the course of the weekend, until the last remaining survivor finds an old book in the attic of the house that has the secret of how to kill it, and he takes it down in a climactic battle and just barely makes it out to tell the tale and keep the memory of his friends alive?”

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

“I just adlibbed that whole bit, swear to god.”

“The attic thing was cool, but the cryptid part was weak.”

“Weak? Why?”

“You were like, oh, it’s half-fish half-human.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s literally a mermaid, Yuta.”

“A mermaid? Making these footprints? You dumbass!”

“So, what, the fish half is its head?”

The grasses appeared to have grown over what was once a path through the dune, and Yuta had yet to make a move to put Jaehyun down, although the wooden deck was far behind them. Yuta was starting to say something about the fish head when they heard Johnny’s voice. It was distant and windblown. Jaehyun patted the side of Yuta’s head to shush him and Yuta patted his arm.

“…didn’t even say anything about that!” Doyoung’s voice carried over the sand.

“You were implying it!”

“I wasn’t implying anything, why do you think I was implying anything? I’m literally speaking as plainly as I can and you’re still finding a way to twist my words?”

Yuta turned his head around to Jaehyun with wide eyes and a round mouth. Their faces were too close. Jaehyun didn’t pull away. Instead he said, “Let’s spy.”

“No,” said Yuta.

“Come on!”

Yuta shook his head, stepping through the grasses onto the beach just as Johnny said, “I’m not the one who keeps making a big deal out of little things,” and then he saw Yuta and Jaehyun and fell silent. Doyoung, who was facing Johnny, whirled around. His dark expression erased itself with apparent effort.

“Howdy,” said Yuta.

“Enjoying the sea view?” said Jaehyun.

“Uh,” said Johnny, “yeah, we, we are.”

“We were just talking,” said Doyoung.

“So loud,” said Yuta. “Such loud talking.”

“I was telling him to stop being obnoxious about _your_ relationship,” said Doyoung. “You’re welcome.”

“Oh Doie,” Yuta simpered, “our savior.”

“I’ll kick your ass,” said Doyoung.

Yuta made some high-pitched burbling sounds, as if he were imitating a bird or a woodland creature. Then he broke into a sprint without warning. Jaehyun laughed and clung to his shoulders for dear life. Doyoung said, “They’re so fucking weird,” but Jaehyun couldn’t hear Johnny’s reply. Yuta’s footsteps slammed on the hard sand. The water was hurtling closer to them.

Jaehyun said, “Yuta, we’re going to go in! We’re going to go in! We’re going in we’regoinginwe’regoing—”

Yuta’s feet splashed and the next thing Jaehyun knew, they had stopped abruptly, or Yuta had stopped but he had bent down, and Jaehyun was flying off him. White sun through the clouds. Green waves. Cold surf. Silence.

Jaehyun lifted his head out of the water and staggered to his feet to find Yuta knee-deep behind him and laughing like a nutcase. Jaehyun tackled him. They both went under. Jaehyun rolled off Yuta, but Yuta held onto him. They rolled again. Jaehyun was pinwheeling in and out of the water, ears whooshing, eyes stinging. To bring them to a halt, he pinned Yuta beneath him. Then he hooked an arm under Yuta’s back and lifted him out of the water. He only wanted to make sure Yuta could breathe. But suddenly, he was pulling Yuta’s body to his, and Yuta was warm with laughter and shiny with water droplets, and Jaehyun kissed him. And kissed him. The kiss was salty like tears. Yuta’s hand was cradling the back of Jaehyun’s head. Jaehyun wasn’t sure when it had gotten there. Yuta was kissing him too. Jaehyun wasn’t sure when that had started.

They came apart, panting. Jaehyun, who had been holding them up with only one hand braced on the seafloor, tipped and fell sideways. There was the sound of cheering from the shore.

Jaehyun struggled to right himself. On the sand, Donghyuck was jumping up and down next to Mark and whooping. Johnny folded his arms and looked at Doyoung, who turned around and went back up the dune.

Yuta stood, pulling Jaehyun up by the shoulders. They clung to each other’s arms. Yuta was red-faced and gleaming.

“That was a stroke of genius,” he whispered.

Jaehyun swallowed. He couldn’t catch his breath.

“SAIL, MY SHIP!” Donghyuck screamed up the sand. “SAIL YOURSELVES AWAY!”

Jaehyun was in a dream. Or, maybe, he had one foot in a dream and one foot in the real world. Every so often the real world would tug on his sleeve, and he’d be forced to remember that the dream wasn’t real. But the dream was happening. He could choose to stay in it for a little longer.

The dream had begun when they’d stepped in the water, or perhaps when they’d stepped in the house. It had rushed away like a wind tunnel earlier when Yuta called the kiss a stroke of genius. Jaehyun had grasped for its edges and caught it just before it was gone. He’d drawn it back, Yuta’s arm around his shoulders and the memory of his mouth still searing Jaehyun’s lips.

He had realized that this weekend was the only chance he’d have in his life to pretend he and Yuta were actually together. The only chance to pretend not just to everyone else, but to himself. And all of a sudden, Jaehyun couldn’t resist. He didn’t want to resist. The fantasy was right there in front of him. All he had to do was live it.

So now here he was, lying on his stomach on a towel on the sand, next to Yuta, who was also lying on his stomach on the same towel. Yuta had forgotten to pack his own towel, of course. Jaehyun had packed their biggest beach towel in case Yuta forgot his and they had to share one. The entire right side of Jaehyun’s body was in the sand, but the left side was lined up with Yuta’s, and his left arm was tangled in Yuta’s right. His cheek was on the towel and his forehead was just barely touching Yuta’s. They had giggled when they lay down and tucked themselves close to each other. Yuta’s eyes were closed now. Jaehyun was looking at his eyelashes and remembering how they had kissed a few hours ago. Wondering if they might do it again. The sun was hot on his back, but Jaehyun barely noticed.

“Hey!”

It was Johnny. Jaehyun shut his eyes quickly. Johnny’s jogging footsteps came closer. “Lovebirds! Wake up!”

Yuta made a noise, and his forehead moved away.

“Sunblock,” said Johnny. Yuta caught the bottle with a light thump close to Jaehyun’s ear. “Reapply. Hyuck already got burned because he didn’t do his ears.”

“Hmmngng,” Yuta complained.

“Fine, don’t reapply. Soak in that UV. Crisp up. By all means.”

“Mmsfh,” Yuta mumbled. Johnny’s footsteps retreated. Yuta’s hand unwound from Jaehyun’s wrist, and the bottle clicked open.

The sunscreen was cold and wet when Jaehyun felt it on his back. He hissed, opening one eye.

“Shhh.” Yuta had raised himself onto one elbow. The sun was bright behind his head like a halo. His hand smoothed the lotion across Jaehyun’s shoulders. “I’m just sunscreening you.”

Jaehyun closed his eye. Yuta’s hand went over his shoulders in circles, slowly. He massaged lotion into the back of Jaehyun’s neck. His touch was at once stark and soft, like shade. Abruptly, it vanished. But it was only gone for a few seconds, and then his hand was on Jaehyun’s lower back with more sunscreen. Jaehyun counted his own breaths. One inhale, one exhale. Steady.

Yuta’s fingers returned to Jaehyun’s shoulder. He doodled there for a minute before swiping some lotion down Jaehyun’s arm. Just like that, his hand was gone again. Jaehyun waited, half-adrift, for it to come back. It didn’t. He opened his eyes. Yuta was rubbing sunscreen on his neck.

“Lie down,” Jaehyun said, “I’ll do you.”

Yuta went “mmm” and flopped onto the towel. Jaehyun took the tube of sunscreen from him. He squeezed some into his hand.

Yuta didn’t wince at the feeling of the cold sunscreen. He didn’t move at all. Jaehyun wondered if he was already falling asleep. He ran the sunscreen along the lines of Yuta’s shoulder blade and down the back of his arm. He traced the lines again. Again. Again. Again. Now the other shoulder. Skin, muscle, bone. He dipped his hand between Yuta’s shoulder blades and followed the knobs of his spine. There was a splotch of pink on Yuta’s neck that he must have missed the first time he applied sunscreen. Jaehyun spread sunscreen over it as softly as he could. Yuta didn’t flinch.

Jaehyun reached over him and spread sunscreen down Yuta’s opposite arm. Yuta’s muscles felt tense. Were they tense? Or did they always feel like this? He traveled back to the top of Yuta’s spine, going down along it. Yuta was so still. His body barely rose and fell with his breaths. Jaehyun tried to will the sunscreen to stay longer on Yuta’s skin so he had to keep rubbing it in.

When he was satisfied that he hadn’t missed a spot, Jaehyun shut the sunscreen bottle and tossed it to the corner of the towel at his feet. Yuta was so deeply asleep, Jaehyun didn’t think he would stir if Jaehyun took his hand and held it. He wanted to. He wanted to gather Yuta close and hold him forever, hold this summer dream forever. He wanted, wanted, wanted.

But if Yuta pulled away, it would break the dream. So Jaehyun just lowered himself back onto the towel and tilted his forehead until it rested against Yuta’s again.

Jaehyun’s mouth was dry and his head was heavy when Mark’s laughter woke him up. He opened his eyes.

First he saw Mark, doing his best to stifle hysterical laughter next to Doyoung, who was on his phone, and Johnny, who was looking the same way as Mark with moderate interest. Jaehyun followed their gazes and saw Donghyuck standing behind Yuta, dangling a tiny crab over his back by the claw. Donghyuck put a finger over his lips, but Jaehyun was already shouting. “Hyuck? YUTA!”

Donghyuck dropped the crab onto Yuta and leapt away. Yuta said, “What? What? WhAEEEEE—”

He flipped over, scrabbling at his neck. The crab swung from his ear. Jaehyun grabbed for it. Yuta, wriggling, yelled, “Get it off get it off get it—”

“YUTA!” Jaehyun said and clapped in front of his face.

Yuta froze. Jaehyun seized the crab and flung it at the water.

“NO!” Donghyuck yelled. “THAT’S MY FRIEND!”

“WHAT’S YOUR FRIEND?” Yuta screamed, getting to his feet and sprinting after Donghyuck. “A FUCKING TARANTULA?”

Jaehyun ran to pull Yuta off Donghyuck. Yuta fought his grip. “Let me at him!”

“Yuta!” Jaehyun said. “It was just a little crab!”

“Yes,” said Donghyuck, who was on his knees pawing through sand and water, apparently in search of the crab, “a sweet little beautiful crab! I bonded with her! I named her Petunia! And Jaehyun THREW HER!”

“A beautiful crab?” Yuta smacked Donghyuck on the shoulder so he toppled sideways into the surf. “Your beautiful crab fucking bit me!”

“ _Bit_ you?” Jaehyun choked.

“Pinched me! Whatever! It felt like a poisonous snake was hanging on my ear,” said Yuta. He watched Jaehyun bend over laughing. “Oh,” Yuta said, “so you want a smack too, Jeong Jaehyun, huh, you wanna get hit too?”

“Sure,” said Jaehyun, “hit me on the lips, with your lips.”

Donghyuck guffawed. A funny look passed over Yuta’s face—almost a _for real?_ look—but it was only there for a split second, and then Yuta grabbed Jaehyun’s neck and kissed him. He kissed him hard, but not long. Jaehyun’s head swam a little as Yuta let him go.

“There. Happy?” said Yuta.

Jaehyun couldn’t even muster an answer. He hadn’t expected Yuta to actually kiss him. Was that all he had to do? Just say some dumb line?

“Hey Jaehyun,” Doyoung said, “what’s on your back?”

Jaehyun jumped sky high. “WHAT’S ON MY BACK?”

“Chill,” said Hyuck, “I didn’t put anything there. He means the sunscreen drawing.”

“Sunscreen drawing?” Jaehyun said. He felt along his back. There were some sticky lines on his left shoulder.

Mark said behind him, “N, Y, 1…?”

“No, it’s a T,” said Yuta, “the top line just sank in.”

“T?” said Jaehyun, patting at the half-dried sunscreen.

“New York Times?” said Johnny.

“Never You Tell,” Mark volunteered.

“You’re all so fucking stupid,” said Donghyuck, who was playing with wet sand now. “You know what your problem is? You’re not thinking Yujae enough. You need to broaden your Yujae perspective.”

“Oh,” said Doyoung.

“What?” said Mark.

Doyoung said, “It’s Nayuta’s initials.”

“Duh!” said Yuta and Hyuck at the same time.

“Aww,” said Doyoung, “that’s kind of cute.”

Johnny snorted. “Cute? I’m sure you love the little heart he made too.”

Yuta piped, “Don’t make fun of me! I was just…drawing!”

“Yeah, Johnny, and in fact I _do_ love the heart he made,” said Doyoung. “What’s wrong with doing nice things sometimes? What’s wrong with expressing how you feel?”

“Oh boy,” said Donghyuck.

“There’s nothing wrong with any of those things,” said Johnny. “I never said there was.”

“Then why are you being an asshole about something cute Yuta did with HIS boyfriend? It’s not even any of your business,” Doyoung said.

Yuta and Jaehyun looked at each other. Johnny said, “All I said was—”

“Okayyyy!” Donghyuck interrupted.

Johnny fell silent. Donghyuck rubbed his hands together. “How about we bury somebody alive? Hm? Johnny? Whaddaya say?

Johnny scowled at him. Donghyuck turned to Mark. “Or, _or_ , we’ll bury Markly. Mark, shell bra and a mermaid tail. Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” said Mark, lying down.

Donghyuck knelt beside him and started to pile sand on top of him. His head swiveled from Doyoung and Johnny to Jaehyun and Yuta. “Well? This is a team project, aren’t you going to help?”

Doyoung looked out at the ocean. Jaehyun was still running fingertips over the heart-shaped sunscreen blob on his back.

Yuta said, “Hyuck, I thought you hated sand.”

“I do,” said Donghyuck, heaving it over Mark’s legs.

Mark cracked up. Yuta shrugged and started helping Hyuck.

“I should start making dinner soon,” said Johnny. He stood, stretched, and walked his towel down the beach to shake it out.

“What’s with y’all?” Yuta asked Doyoung.

Doyoung opened his mouth. Then he rolled his eyes and shoved a foot into the sand.

“Nothing’s _with_ anyone,” said Johnny, turning around.

Yuta jumped.

“I’m going to shower,” said Johnny.

He walked past them and went up the dune path. Jaehyun went to get the sunscreen and started to put some on his face. Everyone was silent. He went to Yuta and knelt. “Yuta, look at me.”

Yuta paused mid-sand-toss. Jaehyun patted sunscreen over his face. “Thanks,” Yuta said and dumped the sand in his hands onto Mark’s stomach.

“Anybody else? Sunscreen?” said Jaehyun.

“Already did it,” said Donghyuck.

“What’s he talking about, start making dinner,” said Doyoung. “It’s like three in the afternoon.”

“Maybe he wants to marinate the meat before we grill it?” said Mark.

Doyoung glowered at the sand. After a minute, he said, “I’ll go see if he needs help,” and took his towel away with him. They all watched his back disappear over the dune.

As soon as he was out of sight, Donghyuck looked around with wide eyes and hissed, “What the fuck?”

Yuta whispered, “You tell us, you’re the vibes reader, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but whatever that is,” Hyuck said, jerking his head at the house, “it’s above my pay grade.”

“Pay grade,” said Mark. “Gray raid.”

“Gay parade,” said Hyuck.

“Oh, that’s good,” said Mark.

“I know. Great day.”

“Not as good.”

“I know! You try thinking of a better one than gay parade.”

“Pray…pray date. Fuck.”

“I thought so.” Donghyuck looked at Yuta. “You think it’s got something to do with the bet?”

Yuta blinked a few times. “I don’t know. Probably not, Johnny didn’t win. I won.”

“Well yeah,” said Hyuck, “but what if Johnny was—”

“Shush,” said Yuta, turning to face him. “Shh. You’ve got sand on your lip. Don’t move or it’ll get in your mouth.”

“Euhhh!” said Hyuck with his mouth wide open.

“There’s sand on his lip?” said Mark. “I can’t see it.”

“It’s there,” said Yuta, getting up. “Hang on, I’ll get some water and rinse it off.”

While Yuta poured water over Hyuck’s mouth and Hyuck spluttered and coughed, Jaehyun’s mind wandered back to Yuta’s initials written across his shoulder in sunscreen. He wondered if he’d take in enough sun today for the letters to be visible tomorrow. Maybe if he did it two days in a row, the letters would stay.

That night, Jaehyun brushed his teeth slowly. He hoped that by the time he got back to their room, Yuta would be asleep, and Jaehyun wouldn’t have to face the reality of sharing a bed with him, or at least, he wouldn’t have to face Yuta in it. Really, this should be simple, he thought as he finished flossing and restarted on his back teeth; this should be easy, after napping half the day away on the same towel as Yuta. He’d fallen asleep with his head to Yuta’s, his hand in Yuta’s, and now he was nervous about sleeping on the opposite side of a bed with him?

It was because he’d been in a dream all day, but now he and Yuta would be alone. And he couldn’t keep pretending they were together when they were alone.

The room was dark when he came back; Yuta’s phone was off now. Jaehyun cracked the door slowly, stepped inside as quietly as he could. It was hard to see. He shuffled with his hands out until he felt the bed.

“You can use your phone light,” Yuta said.

Jaehyun gave a start. “Oh. That’s okay.”

He lowered himself onto the bed, trying not to bend the stiff mattress too much, even though he knew Yuta was awake now. He searched for Yuta’s outline amid the blackness. He couldn’t see it.

He lay down on his back, wondering if Yuta could see him in the dark, since his eyes had had more time to adjust. He felt Yuta shift under the blankets, maybe turning onto his side.

A moment later Yuta whispered, “You were amazing today.”

Jaehyun stared at the ceiling, breath going shallow.

Yuta’s said, “The flirting and the kiss and stuff were literally brilliant. I think Johnny even believes us now.”

Jaehyun said, “You do?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta. “He called us lovebirds when you were asleep.”

“I think I heard,” Jaehyun said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The quiet was viscous. Jaehyun let his head fall sideways.

He could see Yuta now—not his face, but the shape of him. Here was the slope of his waist, here was the hollow of his cheek. Jaehyun let his eyes follow the lines between the different shades of black. Slowly, the darkness yielded to the cutoff glow entering through the window blinds. When it did, Jaehyun found himself looking into Yuta’s eyes. They looked back at his.

“What?” Jaehyun whispered. He could barely hear his own voice.

Yuta said, “What?”

Jaehyun cleared his throat. “You were looking at me...”

“Huh?” Yuta sounded confused. “Ah. Sorry.”

“No,” Jaehyun said, “no, don’t be sorry.”

With a smile in his voice Yuta said, “Okay, I’m not sorry.”

Jaehyun could see the dream playing out in front of him. The dream where he and Yuta were together, where he could do anything he wanted. He could see himself finding Yuta’s lips in the semidark. He could see them kissing, he could see their limbs intertwining, he could see them holding each other. He could see himself running his fingers through Yuta’s hair. He could see himself laying a hand on Yuta’s chest and feeling his heartbeat.

“Good night,” Yuta whispered.

He closed his eyes. Jaehyun did too.

“Good night,” said Jaehyun.

The room wasn’t dark anymore, but gold. Heavy gold, deepened by the blinds over the window, but bright too, full of color. Jaehyun was too hot, and his throat was sandy dry. Even despite that, the feeling draped over his body was blissful. Perfect. Glowing. He’d never move.

It was when that thought came into his mind— _I’m never moving_ —that he felt, or recognized, all the points of contact between Yuta and himself. His arm over Yuta’s side. Yuta’s arm under his arm. Yuta’s knee and ankle over his knee and ankle. Yuta’s head under his chin, and Yuta’s forehead pressed to his collarbone.

Blood rushed in his ears. Oh no. He’d known this was a bad idea. He’d known this was a bad idea! Hadn’t he told himself at the very beginning that fake-dating Yuta was a bad idea? Now they were in a bed together, and at some point in the night he’d pulled Yuta in, and Yuta was trapped here. Well… _had_ he pulled Yuta in? Yuta’s arm, slung over Jaehyun’s side, was underneath Jaehyun’s arm. So had Yuta’s arm been there first?

The heat was making Jaehyun’s head fuzzy. The dream he’d been dreaming before he woke beckoned. Maybe it was just the same dream he’d been living since yesterday. More than anything, he wanted to go back to sleep. But he couldn’t. He had to let Yuta go before Yuta woke up. He closed his eyes and made himself count to ten.

One. Two. Three. Yuta was holding him. Four? Five. They were holding each other. Six. Oh, god, Yuta was in his arms. Yuta. Yuta. Yuta. Yuta. Yuta. Yuta.

Ten. Probably. He was probably past ten now. He had to move.

Slowly he pulled his knee back so Yuta’s leg fell to the bed. Yuta didn’t stir. Jaehyun removed his arm. Still nothing. Should he lift Yuta’s arm off him too, or should he just shimmy backwards until Yuta’s arm dropped by itself?

“Jae?”

Jaehyun froze. Shit. Shit.

Yuta’s head pulled back, but only far enough to look into Jaehyun’s face as he said, “Hey…”

Jaehyun rolled out of the bed. “Sorry.”

Yuta squinted up at him, rubbing one eye.

“Sorry, I was um,” said Jaehyun, standing next to the bed with his limbs hanging uselessly, “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

Yuta looked around. Then he sat up, sheets falling away from him. “No. I’m sorry. Did I…” He laughed softly. “Did I squish my face into your chest in the middle of the night? I don’t even remember.”

Jaehyun echoed his laughter nervously. “I don’t know. Uh.”

Yuta laughed again, more of a breathy sigh than a laugh, and stared at the wall. A few seconds passed.

“Sorry,” Jaehyun said finally and sat on the bed again, facing away from Yuta. He picked up a glass of water and drained it.

“No,” said Yuta, “don’t worry. It’s my fault.”

“No it’s not.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“How do you know?” Yuta said.

Jaehyun’s circuits were shorting. “Um, just, like, it’s okay. It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Jaehyun picked up his phone. He didn’t have any notifications to check. He clicked through some apps anyway.

“Were you saying,” said Yuta, “something a minute ago…?”

“Huh?”

“You were talking?”

Jaehyun half-turned around. “When?”

“Like,” Yuta said, “a few minutes ago. As I was waking up? I thought I heard your voice.”

Had Jaehyun said something? No. He’d been trying not to wake Yuta up. He shook his head.

“Oh,” said Yuta. “I must have…”

He trailed off. Jaehyun got up and opened the shades. Sea and sky streamed in. Jaehyun ducked in front of the mirror to brush his hair, and Yuta’s reflection peered out the window. The morning light, the way he was almost disappearing at the edge of the mirror, it made him look vulnerable somehow.

“Must have what?” Jaehyun said.

Yuta smiled. “Must have been dreaming. What are you doing your hair for? No one’s here except us and the boys.”

Jaehyun tossed the brush onto the bureau. “I don’t know. Hair felt weird.”

“ _My_ hair is weird,” Yuta laughed, patting a platinum blond spike of fluff on the side of his head. “Your hair always looks like it’s that way on purpose.”

Jaehyun went to his suitcase and began to paw around in it aimlessly. “Your hair is cute,” he mumbled.

Yuta said, “Mm? Thanks.”

“You want to go eat something?” Jaehyun said.

He heard Yuta getting out of bed and turned around. Yuta held out his hand.

They walked hand-in-hand to the kitchen to find Doyoung and Johnny slicing a mango as light streamed in through the sliding doors. Johnny didn’t say anything when Yuta fed Jaehyun slices of mango, or when he laid his head on Jaehyun’s shoulder. Jaehyun was starting to forget the difference between the dream and reality. He knew he shouldn’t let himself forget. But maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only one bed let's gooooooo  
> this is the shortest chapter sorry lol more coming tomorrow at this time! thank you for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very minor content warning! (tiny spoiler)
> 
> there's a bit in this chapter where doyoung goes missing for an hour and they get a little worried that something bad might have happened to him but don't worry he's fine lol

“Guys, I think we’re almost there,” Johnny’s voice called from up ahead as Jaehyun’s sneakers crunched over the same pebbles that Yuta had just stepped on. “Doyoung, why are you walking like that, you’ll break an ankle.”

Doyoung was walking backwards to take photos. He lowered his camera, turning around. Yuta yelled, “Why’s Doyoung the only one getting yelled at? Donghyuck was doing cartwheels on the rocks a few minutes ago.”

Johnny whirled around. “He _what?_ ”

“Come on, Johnny,” said Hyuck from behind Mark, “I thought you were the one who’s making a whole thing about being skeptical of Yuta lately. Not jumping to believe anything he says.”

Johnny opened his mouth and closed it. Doyoung, overtaking him at this point, put a hand on his arm to pull him forward. Johnny shrugged it off.

“Johnny, how close is ‘almost there’?” Jaehyun said.

“How’s he supposed to know exactly how close we are?” said Doyoung.

“He has a phone,” said Yuta.

“It’s like two hundred meters,” said Johnny.

“Oh,” said Doyoung.

“Two hundred meters. Few sundry greeters,” said Mark.

“Cue runs in sneakers,” said Donghyuck.

“Through rows of bleachers,” said Jaehyun.

“Fools, rogues and cheaters,” said Johnny.

“Rude secret keepers,” said Doyoung.

“What the hell is wrong with all of you?” said Yuta.

“WE’RE HERE!” said Johnny. He was far up the rocky path, arms thrown wide against the sky. Mark ran past Jaehyun and Yuta. A few seconds later he said, “Whoa!”

Yuta crested the top of the hill before Jaehyun. He shouted, then turned. Mark and Johnny were already running down the other side. Yuta reached for Jaehyun and said, “Baby, look at this.”

Jaehyun took his hand and Yuta pulled him onto the ridge. He was met with a view that dwarfed the one from the bedroom window. Here, the ocean cradled the sky and the sun seared like a bare lightbulb hanging in his eyes. Jaehyun blinked against the glare. The slope curved down before ending abruptly at the cliff. Johnny was creeping toward the edge, inch by inch, with a lot less bravado than he’d had when he suggested cliff diving earlier that day. He wasn’t far from where they stood, but he looked miniscule there, at the precipice, like a cricket on a leaf in a river.

Jaehyun realized just before looking to Yuta that Yuta was looking at him. Yuta laughed, brighter than the ocean colors.

“What?” said Jaehyun, laughing too.

“Why’s it always ‘what?’” said Yuta. “Can’t a guy look at his boyfriend looking at something pretty?”

Jaehyun said, “But I’m not…”

Yuta’s laughter vanished. “You’re not what?”

Jaehyun swallowed. Yuta was staring at him coldly. Almost challengingly. Jaehyun wasn’t sure why he had been about to say “ _I’m not your boyfriend_.” Maybe he was thinking of last night. Maybe he was thinking of this morning. Maybe he wanted Yuta to tell him he was wrong.

Instead, all he could manage was “What?” again.

Yuta’s grin reappeared. “If you’re going to get in the habit of saying ‘what’ every time I look at you, people will start to think you have a one-word vocabulary.”

“Yuta, are you going to jump?” called Hyuck from the edge of the cliff.

“Only if someone records it,” said Yuta, pulling Jaehyun down the short slope. “I’m not doing this if I don’t get any clout.”

“I’ll record you,” said Mark.

“You’re going, right, Mark?” said Hyuck.

“What the fuck? No,” said Mark, crossing his legs in the pebbly sand.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“Have fun dying,” said Mark. “I might miss you.”

Mark held his phone in front of him like a shield as Hyuck went towards him. Yuta was saying to Jaehyun as they put down their bags, “But you’re going.”

“Still uh,” said Jaehyun, “undecided.”

“Would you go if we went together?” said Yuta.

“You can’t go together,” said Doyoung.

“We can’t?” said Jaehyun.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” said Doyoung to Johnny.

“Well you can’t, like, hold hands,” said Johnny. He was crouched at the edge, hands flat on the ground, while Doyoung stood next to him. “You can jump at the same time if you go far apart.”

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun, “I was hoping we could hold hands.”

Yuta said, “Baby, Johnny just said we can’t.”

“Right.”

“Are you going? Doyoung?” said Johnny, looking up.

Doyoung shrugged. “Mm.”

“What is ‘mm’ supposed to mean?”

Jaehyun crawled on his hands and knees to the dropoff. He ran a hand over the place where the rock ended. It was smoother than he’d expected. Some scrappy vines hung a few meters down, deep green in the sun. Far below them, a sweep of water broke white against the wall of rock.

He looked back to say, “Are we sure it’s deep enough…?” but stopped when he saw Donghyuck at the top of the slope. Donghyuck was standing like a racer before the gun, with one foot behind him and his fingertips pressed to the sand.

“Hyuck?” Jaehyun said.

Donghyuck snapped into motion like a rubber band, hurtling down the slope and past Johnny and Doyoung, who stopped arguing to simultaneously shout, “ _Wait!_ ”

“TELLMYMOTHERILOVEHERRRRRRRRRRR!” Donghyuck howled as he threw himself off the edge.

“I HAVEN’T TOLD YOU HOW TO…” Johnny said.

He trailed off. They watched Donghyuck go down for an impossibly long moment, arms pinwheeling against the blue. Jaehyun’s breath halted in his throat. Suddenly he felt like the world was turning upside-down.

“LIKE A PENCIL!” Johnny screamed.

Donghyuck screamed back—it seemed to be a word, but it was incomprehensible—and then with a _swoosh_ , he was in the water.

“What the hell does ‘like a pencil’ mean?” said Yuta.

“YYYYYYYYYYEAAAAAHHH!” Mark yelled over the cliff’s edge. “WOOHOOOO! DONGHYUUUUCK!”

Donghyuck’s head bobbed at the surface. A miniature-sounding “ _Yeaaaahh!_ ” came back to them.

“Jesus fuck,” Jaehyun muttered, removing himself from the edge. His heart was shaking like jelly, and his eyes were vibrating from the sunlight. He scrabbled at the zipper of his bag. His hands felt like jelly too.

“One down,” said Johnny, “four, three? To go.”

“Are you counting me?” said Doyoung.

“I don’t know, should I count you?”

“Nice to know you have to ask to decide if I count.”

“Well you never said you were going!”

“Yes, I did!”

“Jaehyun?” said Yuta’s voice.

He knelt next to Jaehyun. Jaehyun abandoned the zipper and said, “That was fucking scary.”

“What?” said Yuta, unzipping the bag. “The height?”

Jaehyun felt inside the bag for his water bottle. “Hyuck falling.” He took out the bottle and tried to unscrew the cap. “Did you not see that? He just kept falling and falling.”

“Hey,” said Yuta. He was smiling, but his eyes were wide. “Are you okay?”

“I’m…” said Jaehyun. His hand slipped on the cap.

“Jaehyun,” Yuta said, and he threaded his fingers through Jaehyun’s hair on the side of his head. “Hyuck’s fine. He landed safe. He had a great time.”

Jaehyun breathed. The nerves in his body were steadying at Yuta’s touch. His lungs still felt trembly, and so did his hands. “I guess…some vertigo got me.”

Yuta glanced sideways a little, as if to look behind him, but he didn’t turn around. Instead he put his other hand on Jaehyun’s head and kissed his cheek. He kissed his cheek for a few seconds. While he did, his hands ran through Jaehyun’s hair.

By the time he pulled back, the knot in Jaehyun’s stomach had come undone and been replaced by something else.

“You don’t have to jump,” said Yuta, still holding Jaehyun’s head between his hands. “Why don’t you just stay up here with Mark?”

“Okay,” Jaehyun said.

Yuta nodded encouragingly. “Are—do you feel better?”

“Yeah,” he answered honestly.

Relief broke across Yuta’s face. He pushed Jaehyun’s hair back from his face again and cupped his chin. “Good. That’s good. I didn’t know you got vertigo.”

“Once in a while,” said Jaehyun.

“Here.” Yuta took the water bottle from him and unscrewed the cap. “Maybe you’re dehydrated.”

Jaehyun wasn’t dehydrated, but he drank until Yuta was satisfied. Yuta held onto Jaehyun’s shoulder as they went over to Mark.

“What’s with you?” said Mark.

“He got vertigo watching Hyuck fall, what’s with you?” said Yuta as Jaehyun sat down next to Mark.

Mark nodded towards Johnny and Doyoung. “Oh, you know, just lying to myself that I can’t hear them fighting.”

“All I was saying was that it’s unfair of you to say that,” Johnny was saying.

“No,” said Doyoung, “you weren’t saying it was unfair, you were calling me a dumb asshole for saying that you said that I said that—”

“Hey dumb assholes!” Yuta said with his hands cupped around his mouth.

They both fell silent and looked at him, the sea wind pulling at their clothes.

“Now I’ve insulted both of you,” said Yuta. “You have a common enemy. You can stop biting each other’s heads off.”

“We’re not biting each other’s heads off!” said Doyoung, while Johnny said, “We don’t need a common enemy, we’re not enemies!”

“Nice,” Mark said to Yuta.

Johnny made a noise that was part groan, part growl. He backtracked a few steps up the slope, yanking his shirt over his head. “Is Hyuck clear?” he said. His heel hit a rock and he puffed.

“Yeah,” said Mark.

“Hold this,” Johnny said. He hurled his shirt at Doyoung. Doyoung caught it and glared as Johnny ran to the edge.

“GO JOHNNYYYYYY!” said Mark.

“AHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh…”

Jaehyun closed his eyes as Johnny’s voice dwindled. Yuta stroked the top of his head. Sunlight streamed through his eyelids, turning them orange. The dry salt air was brittle on his skin. He heard Johnny land with a distant splash. Everyone was quiet. Yuta’s fingers repeated a path through Jaehyun’s hair. His touch was heartbreaking somehow. It had never felt this unbearably sweet before. Not until yesterday, and then it had started, a little, when they held hands, when they lay close to each other. When Yuta kissed his cheek.

Doyoung said, “Seriously, we’re not fighting, we’re just fucking talking.”

Jaehyun opened his eyes.

“We’d buy that,” said Yuta, “if you always talked to each other that way. But I never heard you raise your voice at him until like this week.”

Doyoung’s lips flattened into a line, then pulled sideways. He threw Johnny’s shirt at his bag. It landed on the ground.

“Hey,” called Hyuck, “what did I miss?”

They all turned their heads to see him emerging up the slope, hair dripping, smile broad. Mark got up and ran to give him a hug. Yuta said, “So? How was it?”

“Great!” Donghyuck laughed as Mark wrapped his arms around his middle and heaved him into the air. “Like the scene in a coming-of-age movie where the protagonist’s heart subtly but irrevocably changes!”

Mark dropped him. “Your heart changed?”

Donghyuck folded his arms and said, “Yes, Mark, as I plummeted through the air at ten meters per second I had some time to think seriously about our relationship, and after deep contemplation I realized that I have to break up with you.”

“You have to—?”

“ _Mark!_ I meant when the protagonist gets, like, self-confidence or something. I wasn’t talking about a romantic heart change. Besides, I’m not the protagonist of this story.” Hyuck looked down the slope at Doyoung, Yuta, and Jaehyun. “Maybe if I were, I _would_ decide to have a heart change.”

Doyoung, staring over the cliff, said, “What?”

“Who is?” Mark said.

“The protagonist?” Hyuck said. He gestured vaguely down the slope. “One of them.”

Jaehyun looked at Yuta, who looked at him.

“What does that mean?” said Doyoung without glancing up.

“It means,” said Donghyuck, pulling Mark down the slope, “ _I’ve_ already jumped, Johnny’s already jumped, so one of you is next. Who’s it going to be? Yuta?”

Yuta knelt in front of Jaehyun again. The sun cast bold strokes of shadow and highlight across his face as he said, “Will it, like, bring on your vertigo if I…?”

“No,” said Jaehyun, catching his hand, “no, it was just a random thing, of course you can go.”

“Really?”

“You’re so fucking cute,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta smiled sweetly and said again, “Reeeallyyy?”

Jaehyun tried to shove him toward the dropoff. “Go. Go go.”

“Guys,” said Doyoung, “did anyone see Johnny get out?”

“He probably did when you weren’t looking,” said Yuta, standing up and shaking out his arms.

“But I was…” Doyoung said and bit his lip, studying the southern shore line.

Yuta ran off, cheered on by Hyuck and Jaehyun and recorded by Mark. Just as his feet left the rock, he blew a kiss at Jaehyun, or flung it, like usual. Jaehyun caught it out of the air. He didn’t watch as Yuta fell—there was something about those few seconds before the splash that felt much too long—but once Yuta was in the water, he looked over the edge and waved.

Johnny came up the path a minute later. Hyuck jumped with no warning again, which made Johnny and Doyoung start arguing about whether it was necessary for Johnny to tell everyone what he’d learned online about cliff-diving technique before they were allowed to jump. Then Doyoung ran off before Johnny could explain to him what a pencil dive was, and Johnny went to get his shirt but found that it was sandy and threw it back onto the ground.

Hyuck and Yuta’s voices carried up the path a few minutes later. They were singing a Sam Kim song. Jaehyun stood up, thinking he should go hug Yuta, like Mark had done the first time Hyuck came back from a jump. Instead he just waited next to Mark awkwardly while Hyuck and Yuta, arm in arm, swung their legs over the slope in sync. Yuta was harmonizing with Hyuck’s melody. “BABY BABY TALK TO ME, TALK TO ME, TALK TO MEEEEE…”

Mark went “Woooooo!” and he and Jaehyun clapped.

Yuta looked at Jaehyun and trailed off, grinning. He ran down the slope while Hyuck adlibbed a run. Jaehyun opened his arms. Yuta crashed into them, still soaking wet.

Johnny said something about the Crush song but Jaehyun didn’t hear.

“No vertigo this time?” said Yuta.

“Nope,” said Jaehyun.

They swayed side to side a little, feet shifting on the rocks.

“How was it?” Jaehyun asked.

“Very blue.”

“Oh, blue.”

“Missing something though.”

“Mm?”

“It was missing something.”

“Yeah?”

“Now you say, ‘what was missing?’”

Jaehyun said, “What was missing?”

Yuta said, “You!”

Jaehyun stopped swaying. He looked into Yuta’s sun-splashed face, his wet eyelashes. “Yuta, I can’t, I’m sorry, I’m too…”

“No, I didn’t mean for you to go with me.” Yuta flicked his forehead. “I don’t want you to traumatize yourself. Johnny said we can’t go together anyway.” He swayed him by the shoulders, playfully, even though their feet were planted now. “It just…wasn’t as good without you.”

They stood still. The front of Jaehyun’s shirt was soaked through. Yuta’s smile went down, but he didn’t lower his eyes, even though their faces were near enough to go out of focus.

“Nothing’s ever as good without you, either,” Jaehyun said.

Yuta said, “Nothing’s anything without you.”

Jaehyun thought he’d either have to kiss Yuta or throw himself off the cliff after all. It didn’t take long to decide which option was better.

“Really,” said Yuta, and Jaehyun was already moving, swallowing the word down.

It was in that moment, when Yuta’s cold lips warmed against his and everything finally, finally stopped spinning, that Jaehyun came closest to forgetting that Yuta was acting. And it was in that moment that he realized he’d never really be able to really forget, even if he wanted to. Because he did want to. He tried.

“Doyoouuuung!”

The pebbles gave way to grainy sand as Jaehyun stepped off the path and onto the beach. His shoes crunched heavily. “Which way? he said.

“Go down to the rocks,” said Yuta on Jaehyun’s back.

“Doyo?”

“Doyoouuuung!”

“Are there any, like,” Jaehyun said as they rounded a thicket of shrubs, “sharp rocks or jagged places or anything at the bottom…?”

“No, no, no,” said Yuta, “nothing like that. He’s fine, he probably just didn’t feel like climbing up the path again. Doyouuuuuuung!”

“I’m putting you down.”

“Yeah, yeah, put me down.”

“Doyo!”

“Doieee!”

They picked their way along the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, but they quickly ran out of places to step. The wall of rock curved up ahead, and while they could see the top of the cliff they’d jumped from, there was a stretch of rock that wasn’t visible from here.

Yuta called Doyoung’s name again. Jaehyun said, “We saw the other side from up there, right?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta. “Besides, he’d hear us if he were over there.”

“Should we swim around it,” said Jaehyun, “just to check if there’s, like, an overhang or a cave we didn’t notice? Somewhere he might’ve…”

Alarm flashed over Yuta’s face. Then he said, “Yeah. I’ll go, I already got wet. Hold this for me.”

“Can you talk to me while I can’t see you?” said Jaehyun, reaching to take Yuta’s phone.

Yuta smiled. He let go of his phone and touched the back of Jaehyun’s wrist. “Sure. It’ll take two seconds.”

“Okay.”

Jaehyun watched Yuta go into the water and swim toward the bend. They hadn’t seen Doyoung in nearly forty-five minutes. Mark and Hyuck were looking for him among the shrubs and sparse trees on the hillside, while Johnny had gone down the opposite side of the cliff. No one had called or texted. Jaehyun was starting to get nervous.

“What do you know about this seaweed?” said Yuta, tossing a reddish clump backwards over his head.

“Not much,” said Jaehyun as Yuta went around the bend and out of sight.

“Come on, plant master. Do better.”

“Well that’s the thing,” said Jaehyun, “that seaweed’s not really a plant. I mean, some seaweed is, but whatever you just threw was some kind of algae, which you can consider a plant in some ways, but in a lot of ways it doesn’t act like a plant. Yuta?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh. I just wanted to make sure you were still there.”

“I’m here, babe.”

“Do you see anything?”

“No.” Yuta’s voice was drawing closer again. “Just rocks. I’m coming back.”

“All right.”

“And you did know a lot about the algae.”

“No I didn’t. All I knew is that it was algae.”

“More than I knew.”

Yuta rounded the corner. Jaehyun felt better as soon as he saw him. He pulled Yuta back onto the rock and Yuta said, flipping back his wet hair, “What now, should we go back up?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Jaehyun followed Yuta to the path. Fragments of calling voices, Hyuck and Mark’s, drifted down the hill on the dry breeze. The sun was getting lower, the shadows lengthening. Jaehyun bit at his thumbnail. Yuta pulled his hand away from him and held it. “If Doyoung went back to the house without telling anyone, I’ll kill him for real.”

“You think he went back alone?” said Jaehyun.

“Well it’s not like he’s not hiding in the grasses, and nobody else has found him.”

“Why would he leave? Because he’s mad at Johnny?”

“I guess.” Yuta turned Jaehyun’s hand over, patting it cutely. “Promise you’ll just talk to me if you’re ever that mad at me.”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun laughed, “okay. I don’t think I’d ever have a reason to be.”

“Or if you’re ever that anything at me,” Yuta said.

“Anything?” Jaehyun said.

Yuta nodded. Close to them, they heard Hyuck yell, “KIM DOYOUNG, YOU SEXY BASTARD, IF YOU DON’T SHOW YOUR FACE IN THE NEXT EIGHT SECONDS…”

“He’s not going to come out if you call him a bastard,” Mark said.

“But I called him sexy to negate the insult.”

“That’s not how insults work.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So you guys haven’t seen him?” said Yuta as they passed a bush and Hyuck and Mark came into view.

“No,” said Hyuck.

“Have you heard from Johnny?” said Mark.

Jaehyun held up his phone. “Nothing.”

“He’s probably walking home just to spite Johnny,” said Hyuck.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” said Yuta.

“But without any of his stuff?” said Mark.

Hyuck brushed past him. “Let’s go back up and see. Maybe he was waiting behind a tree for us to all go looking for him, and then when we left, he got his bag and bolted.”

“That would be pretty calculated,” said Yuta, pulling Jaehyun up the path after Hyuck, “even for Doyoung.”

Jaehyun opened his phone and brought up Johnny’s contact. He dialed. It had barely rung once when Johnny picked up. “Did you find him?”

“No,” said Jaehyun.

“Fffuck,” said Johnny.

“We think he might have just gone home or something. Where are you?”

“Tell him to meet us at the top,” said Hyuck over the sound of Johnny’s voice on the phone.

Jaehyun said into the receiver, “Sorry, what? Your brother was talking.”

“I’m coming up the hill,” Johnny said again. “What did my brother say?”

“He said to meet us at the top of the hill.”

“I’m already going.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think he went home?” said Jaehyun.

“Huh? I guess,” said Johnny.

Yuta motioned at Jaehyun with his hand.

“What?” said Jaehyun.

Johnny repeated, “I guess.”

Jaehyun said, “No, sorry, I was talking to Yuta.”

“Tell him we’re almost at the top,” said Yuta.

“We’re almost at the top,” said Jaehyun.

“Me too,” said Johnny.

Jaehyun started to answer, but then he heard, and they all heard, Johnny shouting Doyoung’s name at the top of his lungs. It came through the phone and over the peak of the hill. He shouted twice: “ _Doyoung?_ DOYOUNG!”

They sprinted the rest of the way to the top. Jaehyun stepped off the path just in time to see Johnny lose control of his momentum as he practically slid down the slope to where Doyoung, looking perfectly well and healthy, sat between their bags. Doyoung stuck an arm out to block Johnny from skating all the way off the cliff. Johnny tripped over Doyoung’s arm, scrambled back to him, and threw his arms around him.

“DOYOUNG!” Hyuck screamed as they all tumbled down the slope. “WHERE WERE YOU?”

“We were all looking for you!”

“We were freaking out!”

“Are you okay? What happened?” said Johnny, still hugging Doyoung tightly from the side like a child hugging an oversize teddy bear.

“I’m fine,” said Doyoung, holding Johnny’s forearm in his hands, “it’s fine. I got caught in the water.”

“Caught in the water? How?” said Yuta.

“Uh, I guess like, a riptide, or something,” Doyoung said.

“Oh fuck,” said Mark.

“Oh my god, why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you yell for help?” said Johnny.

Doyoung said, “Well I was underwater, wasn’t I, Johnny?”

Johnny’s face crumpled and he said, “Jesus,” and bent his head to Doyoung’s shoulder.

“What happened?” said Jaehyun. “How did you get out?”

“I kind of drifted out for a while,” said Doyoung, leaning his head on Johnny’s. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Not fight it? I don’t know.”

“I think you’re thinking of the vines from Harry Potter,” said Mark.

“Well maybe you’re right,” said Johnny, “because then after you were out of the current, you still had the strength to swim to shore, right?”

“Yeah,” said Doyoung, “right.”

“Are you dehydrated? Do you need food?” said Yuta, diving into his bag.

“Yuta, I was only out there for like twenty minutes,” said Doyoung.

“Twenty minutes? It’s been an hour!” said Johnny.

Doyoung lifted his head off the top of Johnny’s and looked at him. “An hour?”

“Doyoung, it’s past five o’clock,” said Jaehyun.

Doyoung looked around at the four of them and said, “Fuck. Um, sorry I scared you guys.”

“Don’t worry,” said Johnny, “we’re glad you’re okay.”

Doyoung said, “Thanks.”

Johnny let go of him. Doyoung folded his arms. “Thanks everybody,” he said, “for looking for me.”

“What kind of friends would we be if we didn’t look for you?” said Yuta.

“I feel like I kind of ruined the mood for the afternoon,” said Doyoung.

“You did,” said Hyuck. “Can we go home now?”

“It’s not his fault,” said Johnny.

“Did I say it was? Let’s get pizza tonight.”

“Let’s make a bonfire,” said Jaehyun.

“You’re brilliant,” said Yuta.

“Is that allowed?”

“Who cares?”

They dragged the fire pit from around the side of the house, dug it into the sand, and dumped in a bag of coals that Mark found under the deck. The sun set while sparks rose into the purple-washed sky. By the time the coals burned low, a chalky sort of exhaustion had settled into Jaehyun’s limbs. He felt stretched thin, as if another surprise might prompt him to snap in two, or disintegrate in a puff of powder.

He wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of the long weekend. Johnny was still on edge from earlier, and Doyoung had been quiet since the afternoon. Yuta, on the other hand, was leaning into his boyfriend role as enthusiastically as ever, lying with his head in Jaehyun’s lap and pointing at stars above their heads, telling Jaehyun he looked like a constellation whose name he couldn’t remember. When Jaehyun asked how he looked like a constellation, Yuta just said, “What about you is not constellation-like?”

The pizza boxes were empty, the birthday cake was more or less demolished, and they were all two or three beers in when Hyuck said, “All right, since it’s my birthday weekend and it’s almost over, I get to decide what campfire game we’re playing.”

“Campfire game?” said Jaehyun.

“Vampire flame,” said Mark.

“We played enough games this weekend,” said Johnny, “can’t we just relax for our last few hours?”

“Empire name,” Hyuck said to Mark. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to move or anything. I just want to play Truth or Dare without the Dare part.”

“Without the Dare part?” said Johnny. “Why?”

“Because I don’t feel like getting up,” said Hyuck. “I’ll go first. Mark, who’s your favorite person here?”

Mark, head propped on his elbow, sat up. “That’s what you’re using your turn to ask?”

“If you lie or refuse to answer,” said Hyuck, “you’re out, and you have to run into the ocean.”

Doyoung said, “What? Hyuck—”

“My birthday, my rules,” said Hyuck sweetly.

“Well I’m sorry y’all,” said Mark, “but Hyuck’s my favorite person here.”

“Didn’t we already know that?” said Yuta.

“Yeah,” said Hyuck. “I did an easy one on purpose, it was just a warm-up. Mark, it’s your turn. You can ask anyone anything.”

“Can I bow out of this game? I don’t want to play,” said Doyoung.

“What,” said Hyuck with a degree of glee, “got something to hide from your besties, Doyoung?”

“No,” said Doyoung.

“Great. Mark?”

Mark studied each of their faces around the fire. When he looked at Johnny, who was staring at him with exaggeratedly raised eyebrows, he started to giggle. “This is weird. What should I ask?”

“You can’t think of anything?” said Hyuck.

Mark said, “Well I can think of something to ask you.”

“You can’t ask me.”

“I thought you said he could ask anyone,” said Jaehyun.

“Anyone but the person who just asked you something,” said Hyuck.

“Oh,” said Mark. “Okay, then Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun’s pulse picked up. Why was he nervous? He’d been lying all weekend. All week. He could lie some more if he had to.

“Uhhhh,” said Mark, tapping his chin and looking at the sky. He giggled some more. “This is hard.”

“Anything, Mark,” said Hyuck. “The idea is to be, like, lightning-round fast. Keep them on their toes.”

“You’re making all these rules up as you go,” said Johnny.

“Yes? That’s the whole point,” said Hyuck.

“Okay, Jaehyun,” said Mark, “what’s the thing you hate most about Yuta?”

“Ooooh!” said Hyuck, clapping his hands and chortling like a chimera.

“Mark Lee,” said Yuta, lifting his head off Jaehyun’s thigh to glare over the fire.

“Is that too…?” said Mark.

“No,” said Johnny and Yuta at the same time.

Yuta lowered his head back to Jaehyun’s leg and beamed up at him toothily. “Give it to me, baby,” he said. He felt for Jaehyun’s hand, pulled it to his lips and said, “Don’t hold back. I can take it.”

Jaehyun frowned at him. Their clasped hands fell to Yuta’s chest. Jaehyun couldn’t think of anything he hated about him. Even the things he didn’t like were also things he loved. He wouldn’t change any of them.

“Come on,” said Hyuck, “stop getting lost in each other’s eyes like Romeo and fucking Juliet on the balcony and give us some dirt.”

“What I hate most about him?” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah,” said Mark.

“What pisses you off,” said Johnny. “What really grinds your gears.”

“Yeah, something that makes you want to either kiss him or push him off a cliff,” said Doyoung.

Jaehyun looked up. “I never want to push him off a cliff.”

Yuta laughed. Doyoung rolled his eyes and Hyuck said, “There must be something about him that makes you feel like, you know, god damn it, I wish this guy would stop.”

Jaehyun looked down into Yuta’s eyes, expectant, big as a starless sky and disrupting gravity with their pull. The way they always did.

“He,” Jaehyun said, “sometimes he’s…”

“Yeah?” said Hyuck. “Yeah?”

“…so fucking beautiful,” Jaehyun whispered. Yuta blinked up at him.

“For fuck’s sake,” said Johnny, “that doesn’t count. Judge, please.”

“Yeah, that’s weak as hell,” said Hyuck.

“Come on,” said Doyoung, “I think it’s sweet.”

Johnny made a noise. “Oh, uh huh, the Yujae Defender over here.”

Doyoung said, “I’m not the goddamn Yuj—”

Hyuck stood up, waving his arms like a referee. “Stop! Not that again! We’re moving on! Jaehyun, it’s your turn. Ask somebody something.”

“Me?” said Jaehyun.

“Yes, Mister Shooters-for-Yutas, you. Make it good,” said Hyuck, “you owe the tribunal a juicy question, since you failed to contribute anything impressive when it was your turn to answer.”

“I can’t think of a juicy question,” said Jaehyun.

Hyuck groaned, clutching Mark’s hand as if for emotional support. “Yes you can, come on. Dig deep. Or if you really can’t, then just ask something fast and get it out of the way so we can keep going.”

“Okay, sure,” said Jaehyun.

“Hyuck, don’t rush him,” said Yuta.

“No, I have something,” said Jaehyun, smoothing Yuta’s hair back. Shades of fire and moonlight played on Yuta’s face. “Why’d you say I look like a constellation?” Jaehyun said. “What does that mean?”

Yuta clicked his tongue. “I don’t know. Unreachable beauty, mythical proportions, all that. I was just saying shit.”

“Okayyy,” said Hyuck, “Yujae domesticity hour is now concluded. Yuta, ask someone a question.”

“I thought you loved Yujae domesticity,” said Mark, yanking on Hyuck’s hand to try to get him to sit back down.

“I do,” said Hyuck, dropping down onto the towel. “But I’m thirsty for drama right now, and Yujae’s not providing it. Yuta, go.”

“Okay,” said Yuta. “I’ve got a question I’ve been curious about. Doyoung, what was it like getting caught in the riptide?”

Doyoung’s mouth opened soundlessly.

“Uh, if it was too traumatic,” said Yuta, “just forget it. I’ve got plenty of other questions I can ask, trust me.”

“No, no,” said Doyoung. “Um. Actually guys I lied about the riptide.”

Yuta sat up.

“What?” Johnny said.

“I,” said Doyoung, drawing his knees close to his chest, “just went up the beach for a while and then I came back and you guys were freaking out and I kind of made up the, thing.”

“Are you serious?” said Hyuck, while Johnny stood up saying, “Doyoung, what the fuck!”

“I’m sorry,” said Doyoung.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” said Jaehyun.

“We looked for you for a half hour! Jaehyun was scared!” said Yuta.

“We were _screaming_ ,” said Johnny, “running up and down the cliff screaming your name, and you didn’t fucking hear us?”

Doyoung said into his knees, “I heard you.”

“Oh,” said Johnny, “so you just hid and let everyone think something terrible might have happened to you.”

“I wasn’t hiding! I was…I was…”

“What, what were you doing?” Johnny said, his voice rising.

“Okay, Johnny, chill,” said Hyuck. “When I said I was thirsty for drama, this is not what I—”

“I was trying to see if you’d care if I didn’t come back!” said Doyoung, standing up.

Johnny appeared to lose his balance for a second. “So you made up some bullshit story and gave us all a heart attack just because you were pissed at me?”

“Not a nice feeling when someone keeps something from you for no reason,” Doyoung snarled, “is it?”

The incredulous laughter fell away from Johnny’s face. “That’s—you’re—”

“But no, no matter what I do,” said Doyoung, “no matter what I say, you’ll never admit it, you act like you don’t care, oh, I’m Johnny Suh, I’m so above it all, I’m such a tough guy!”

Johnny said, “What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

Doyoung was still going. “And yet you _hate_ when I bring it up, you act like a brat anytime anyone mentions anything even _loosely_ related to it, and you still refuse to tell me—”

“What the fuck,” said Hyuck, “what the hell is ‘it’?”

“—so what choice did I have except to, to, get lost at sea for a little bit? How else was I going to see whether you even give a damn about me?” Doyoung said.

“Of course I give a damn about you!” shouted Johnny.

“I know!” said Doyoung. “I know you do! So admit it to yourself!”

“Then why don’t _you_ admit it?” said Johnny. “Why don’t you admit why you won’t let it go?”

“I’m not the one who’s not letting it go! You won’t talk to me like a normal human, you won’t leave _them_ in peace—”

“Us…?” said Yuta, glancing at Jaehyun when Doyoung pointed at them.

Doyoung turned. “When you guys made that stupid bet two weeks ago, Johnny sent me a text, and I didn’t see it for like _ten minutes_ —”

“You left it on read,” said Johnny, and Doyoung said, “I was at work! I, I, I was surprised, I didn’t have a chance to answer!”

“What did the text say?” said Hyuck, leaning forward.

Doyoung said, “About the bet, and that he was confessing, and then two minutes later he saw Yuta’s post on Instagram, the picture of Jaehyun, and he texted me again like, _oh wow, sorry, can’t believe I sent that to the wrong person, lol, crazy,_ and I asked whom he meant to send it to, but he won’t tell me—”

“Why won’t you believe me? Why won’t you just drop it?” said Johnny.

“Because you’re still acting weird and I can’t stand it!” said Doyoung, stamping his foot. He sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “I miss you!”

Johnny said, “That’s the only reason?”

Doyoung’s mouth twisted. Johnny’s hands were balled into fists at his sides. Waves crashed behind them in the quiet.

“Oh, my _god_ ,” said Hyuck and pushed himself to his feet.

Doyoung turned around. Yuta gripped Jaehyun’s arm.

“What is this, a game of confession chicken?” Hyuck said. “First person to say they’re in love loses?”

Johnny and Doyoung stared at him. Hyuck yelled, “Confessing doesn’t make you the loser! It makes you the winner! Bet or no bet!”

Doyoung’s wide eyes stayed on Hyuck for a long moment.

“Doyoung, you were right,” said Johnny.

Doyoung whirled around.

“The text wasn’t a mistake,” said Johnny.

Doyoung went very still, like he had stopped breathing. Johnny looked down. A second later, Doyoung grabbed Johnny’s face and kissed him.

Hyuck gasped, and Yuta slapped his hand over his mouth and looked at Jaehyun. Jaehyun could see the laughter rising on Yuta’s face. He looked from Yuta to Johnny and Doyoung, who were still kissing, to Hyuck, who was staring across the fire at Yuta and Jaehyun with his mouth wide open. Mark was recording Johnny and Doyoung on his phone. Hyuck slapped Mark’s phone down. “ _What?_ ” Mark mouthed. Hyuck made a face at him.

Doyoung let Johnny go, and Yuta buried his face in Jaehyun’s shoulder to keep from laughing.

“I’m sorry,” Johnny and Doyoung said at the same time.

“No,” said Johnny, “I’m sorry. I was an asshole.”

“No,” said Doyoung. “Well, yeah. But so was I.”

“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have lied that the text wasn’t for you,” said Johnny.

“Yeah,” said Doyoung, “but I should have just told you I wanted it to be for me.”

“Wait,” said Yuta, “wait, Johnny, wait, so you’ve been acting like a jerk about me and Jaehyun this whole time because you were bitter that I got Jaehyun to be my boyfriend before you confessed to Doyoung?”

Johnny looked a little dazed. He tore his eyes off Doyoung and said, “Uh…yes?”

Hyuck and Mark were cracking up. Yuta turned to Jaehyun. “Baby, you hear that? We’re free!” He kissed Jaehyun’s forehead. “No more nagging! No more conspiracy theories!”

“Yuta,” Jaehyun muttered.

“So you guys are telling me that this whole time,” Hyuck said, “you’ve been fighting over a _text?_ ”

“Well, a text I confessed in,” said Johnny.

“Johnny, why the heck did you tell him it was a wrong sent?” Mark said.

Johnny said, “He left me on read! And then I realized Yuta had posted on Instagram before I sent the text, so I wasn’t going to win the pie booth bet anyway, and I thought I had just made things weird for no reason—”

“And it never once occurred to you,” said Doyoung, “that the only reason I didn’t reply in a single instant was because I was freaking out that you had just told me something I’ve been wanting to hear for forever?”

“Forever?” said Johnny, looking like he was about to float off the sand.

“Okay,” said Jaehyun, standing up, “maybe we should give you guys some time to talk.”

“Nooo, noo,” said Hyuck, “this is so fun! It’s like a romcom!”

“Jaehyun’s right,” Yuta said, standing up with Jaehyun. “C’mon, Hyuckie, let’s take it inside.”

Jaehyun stretched his arms above his head. “I think it’s um…time for me to go to bed.”

“Tired?” said Yuta. Jaehyun nodded.

“Fine,” said Hyuck, “all right. I’ll allow you to go to bed before ten o’clock on the night of my birthday celebration, but only because Johnny and Doyoung provided such compelling entertainment this evening.”

“I thought you said this _wasn’t_ the kind of drama you wanted,” said Yuta.

“Them yelling at each other about Doyoung pretending to almost drown, no,” said Hyuck. “But double confessions? Absolutely!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> johndo stoopid lol  
> last 2 chapters will be posted tomorrow at this time <3 thanks for coming by!


	5. Chapter 5

Jaehyun sat cross-legged on the floor next to his suitcase, folding and refolding the clothes they’d put through the laundry earlier. He could hear Hyuck and Mark shouting rhyming phrases back and forth in the kitchen, Doyoung and Johnny’s murmuring voices in the next room. Yuta was in the bathroom washing up. Jaehyun had a pit in his stomach. He kept telling himself it was because of the exhaustion, or because of the stress of the fake relationship. But there was something else too. It was sitting in him like a knot, like acid. Why wasn’t it going away? He was happy for Johnny and Doyoung. He was thrilled for them. Today had been a great day.

The bedroom door opened, and Yuta stepped inside. “Hey,” he said. “You’re still up?”

Jaehyun moved a shirt from one side of the suitcase to the other. “Just finishing packing.”

Yuta nodded. He sat down on the bed. “I’m sad we have to leave tomorrow morning,” he said. “This weekend was so much fun.”

Jaehyun shoved some socks deeper into the bag. Suddenly, the thought of sleeping in the same bed as Yuta again was overwhelming. The thought of Yuta himself was overwhelming.

“Yeah,” Jaehyun said, standing, “actually, I think I’m going to take a little walk on the beach before I go to sleep.”

“Oh!” said Yuta. “No, yeah. That’s a great idea. Do you mind if I go with you? I uh…”

“I was,” said Jaehyun, pulling open the door, “thinking I’d go alone for a little bit.”

“Okay!” said Yuta. He waved from the bed. “Have fun!”

“I don’t know if I’ll be back before you fall asleep,” said Jaehyun.

“Okay,” said Yuta.

“So,” Jaehyun said, “good night.”

“Good night,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun closed the door and went out through the kitchen, fending off Mark and Hyuck’s questions with “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He went barefoot over the deck and through the dune. The sand was soft, but the grasses were sharp underfoot. A half-moon dropped flakes of glitter over the black ocean. Incheon shone palely at a point far down the coast. All the light seemed distant and small.

Jaehyun walked past the firepit, whose dusty crimson coals were almost burned out, and took a few steps into the waves. If Yuta were here with him right now, the water would be cool instead of cold, and the coals would be embers instead of ashes. Well, Yuta could be here. He had asked to come. But Jaehyun couldn’t face him.

He sat down on the dry sand and drove his feet into it. He couldn’t stop thinking about Johnny and Doyoung. How had they made it this long without realizing they were into each other? Even after Johnny confessed weeks ago? They had both admitted today that they’d been assholes. And they were right! They’d been stupid, and stubborn, and generally completely ridiculous. But was Jaehyun any better? Laughing at Johnny and Doyoung for lying about their feelings, when it was Yuta and Jaehyun who had been lying to all of them all along?

He was a hypocrite. He and Yuta both were. Hyuck’s bet had made them all act like a bunch of idiots. Was it even worth it anymore? Should he tell Yuta he wanted out of the fake relationship? If he did, would he stop feeling so guilty?

He sat in the sand while the moon went higher and the tide came in. He sat there for so long that eventually he figured Yuta must be asleep. Oh well. He could talk to him tomorrow. Yeah. He could wait until they were at home tomorrow, and then he could sit him down and say…what? That he wanted to stop fake-dating, right? But he didn’t want to. But he did.

He could figure it out tomorrow.

Jaehyun brushed the sand off his shorts and went up the dune. He was almost at the house when he heard the sliding doors open. Whispering voices carried over the deck, but the sand swallowed their edges so the words were unintelligible. Jaehyun heard Doyoung’s laugh.

“Hey guys,” Jaehyun said as he rounded a corner and found Johnny pulling Doyoung down the steps.

Doyoung jumped, and Johnny whirled around with a squeak.

“Going for a walk?” said Jaehyun.

Doyoung stepped closer to Johnny, hands behind his back. “Yes.”

“Yep,” said Johnny, “a walk.”

“Exactly what we were planning on doing,” said Doyoung.

“Right! I was talking to Doyoung and I said, hey, you know what would be so nice right now? A walk,” said Johnny, and Doyoung stepped on his foot.

“O…kay,” said Jaehyun. He went up the steps. “Well, make sure to be safe.”

Doyoung balked. “Safe?”

“On your walk,” said Jaehyun.

“Oh,” said Doyoung.

“Will do!” said Johnny. “Sleep well!”

“Thanks,” said Jaehyun. “Have fun.”

He went inside. The kitchen was dark. Mark and Hyuck must have gone to bed. Jaehyun felt his way down the hall, rinsed the rest of the sand off his feet in the shower, and went back to the bedroom.

He realized the lights were still on inside just before he opened the door.

“Hi,” said Yuta, putting his phone down. He was still on the end of the bed where Jaehyun had left him.

Jaehyun said, “You’re still awake.”

“Me? Yeah,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun stood awkwardly in the doorway. Then he closed the door behind him and went to his suitcase. “You didn’t wait up or anything, right?” he said, stepping out of the sandy shorts so he could pull on a new pair over his boxers.

“No, no,” said Yuta. “Uh…well I kinda did. I was thinking maybe we could talk for a second.”

Jaehyun, one and a half legs into the clean shorts, lost his balance and stumbled. He caught himself on the dresser.

“Are you okay?” said Yuta.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun, finally getting his shorts on. He knelt to fold the old pair and tuck it into a side pocket before any more sand got on the floor. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta, “so, I guess, like…isn’t it kind of funny about Johnny and Doyoung?”

The knot in Jaehyun’s stomach loosened. Yuta had been thinking the same thing as him. “Yeah! Yeah. It’s so weird. Like, Johnny sends that text, and we make that post, and then he tries to take the text back—it’s like we shouldn’t have even started this whole lie in the first place, right?”

Yuta put his hands behind him on the bed. He said slowly, “Um…right. We…” He nodded. “We made it pretty difficult for them.”

Jaehyun wished he hadn’t said that in exactly that way. “Well, a little bit...”

“I guess it did get a little out of hand,” said Yuta, voice lowering.

“Not,” said Jaehyun, “in a bad way. Just, yeah. We got carried away?”

He barely even knew what he was saying, but Yuta’s face opened a little. “Yeah,” Yuta said. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

“Hm?” said Jaehyun.

“Uh,” Yuta said. He looked closer at his hands, laughed, and folded them in his lap. “So yeah, stop me if I’m way out in la-la land or something here, but you know the last couple times we kissed…?”

Jaehyun’s brain sputtered like a hard drive splashed with water. “Yeah?”

Yuta said, “Again, if I’m way off, stop me. But when you kissed me, were you really…were you kissing me for real?”

“For real?” said Jaehyun. “No. No no no, no no.”

“Oh,” said Yuta. “Okay.”

“Like, kissing you outside the fake acting thing? No,” said Jaehyun. “Did it seem like I was? I wasn’t.”

“Okay,” said Yuta with a laugh. “No, I was just wondering.”

“On the cliff?” said Jaehyun. “All the boys were around.”

“Yeah,” said Yuta, nodding doggedly.

“I,” said Jaehyun, “I wasn’t, I mean, I don’t know about… Were you?”

“Me? No,” said Yuta. “I just…had a moment where… You’re a great actor.”

“A moment where what?” said Jaehyun. His voice came out high and strained.

Yuta got up. He was going around to his side of the bed. “Where I wasn’t sure what was going on. But yeah. I just wanted to double check or whatever.”

Jaehyun sat on the edge of the bed while Yuta lay down. What the hell had just happened? _When you kissed me. Kissing me for real._

“Should we stop?” Jaehyun said.

Yuta’s hand froze halfway to the lamp. “Do you want to?”

“No!” said Jaehyun. He barked a laugh. “I just meant if I’m being, if I’ve been, if it’s, too much.”

“No, no,” said Yuta. “You’re great. You’re awesome. I wish I had your acting skills.”

He turned off the light. Jaehyun blinked into the empty dark. Guilt still burned in his stomach. In fact, it was worse now. What had he been wanting to say earlier? Oh yeah. “Because like, I was wondering what you’re thinking about doing after Friday. After the fair?”

“After the fair?” said Yuta. His voice was muffled against his pillow.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun. “Are we going to tell everyone we made the whole thing up?”

Yuta was silent for several seconds. Jaehyun was about to speak again when Yuta said, “Let’s figure that out when we come to it.”

There was a note of fatigue, of disengagement, in his voice that Jaehyun didn’t usually hear from him. It snagged on Jaehyun’s heart like a fishhook. He felt like he’d misstepped. He wanted to say something to fix it, to bring them back into equilibrium, but everything he could think to say would only unbalance.

“Okay,” Jaehyun said. The word vanished into the darkness. “All good?” he added, but that didn’t go anywhere either.

“Yeah,” said Yuta, feeling for Jaehyun and patting his side. “All good. G’night.”

“Good night,” said Jaehyun. He was still sitting on the bed with his back to Yuta. He pulled the covers back and got into the bed.

“I promise I won’t roll over and grab you tonight,” said Yuta.

“You can,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta laughed softly. “’Kay.”

Jaehyun opened his eyes and closed them. There wasn’t any difference between the two darknesses. What had he said wrong? Had he not been convincing enough? Or had he been too convincing? No, no. Yuta had been concerned, not hopeful. And of course he would be concerned. They were best friends. They couldn’t have feelings for each other. If they had feelings for each other…

No. They couldn’t. Well, Jaehyun did, but it didn’t belong outside of himself. Only inside. He had let it show a little too much this weekend. And Yuta had noticed. _Yuta had noticed_. Well, Jaehyun would just have to reign it in.

He listened to the near-silence until Yuta’s breathing was slow and even. He wanted nothing more than to fall asleep himself, but he was awake for a long time.

When Jaehyun went to Johnny and Hyuck’s apartment on Thursday, the pit in his stomach had expanded, grown itchy, restless. He had realized that it wasn’t a wholly unfamiliar feeling. It was, however, stronger now than it had ever been. It didn’t help that Yuta had a big exam on Friday and was studying at the library most nights this week. If he were around more, maybe the rock in Jaehyun’s stomach would lighten.

It would have to go away tomorrow. Then this dating charade would be over, and Jaehyun could forget about it all.

Johnny had told Jaehyun and Yuta to stop over on their way home today. When Jaehyun rang the doorbell, he heard Johnny yell “Got it!” and lumbering footsteps. Then the door swung open.

“Jaehyun!” said Johnny. “Enter, my dear fellow.”

“My dear fellow?” said Jaehyun, stepping inside. “What is that?”

“Where’s Yuta?”

“He said in the chat, he’s studying for an exam.”

“His loss,” said Johnny, beckoning Jaehyun into the apartment.

Jaehyun took off his shoes. The apartment was hot and smelled sweet. “Have you been…baking?”

Doyoung walked in from the kitchen in oven mitts, carrying a lumpy tray. “Yes!”

“Oh,” said Jaehyun. “Hey Doyoung. Where’s Hyuck?”

“At Mark’s or something,” said Doyoung with a rosy beam.

“We made cookies!” said Johnny, sweeping across the room to Doyoung. He reached for the tray. “And your timing is perfect, they just come out of the—”

“JOHNNY, DON’T—”

Doyoung jerked the tray away from Johnny’s hands, and the cookies flew off.

“Ahhh!” said Johnny as the cookies sailed through the air in a perfect arc and hit the wall.

“NO!” said Doyoung and dropped to his knees.

Johnny grabbed for the tray again, and Doyoung whipped it away, saying, “JOHNNY! IT’S HOT!”

“Oh yeah!” said Johnny, freezing with his hands clutching open air.

“Spoon! Spoon!” said Doyoung.

“Ahh! Spoon!” said Johnny. He disappeared into the kitchen. A second later he reappeared with a spatula.

“THAT IS NOT A SPOON?” said Doyoung.

“Hold the tray!” said Johnny. He dug the spatula into the pile of cookies on the floor.

“WHY ARE YOU GOING THROUGH THE MIDDLE?” said Doyoung.

“Because the bottom layer touched the floor!”

“THERE ARE NO LAYERS!” said Doyoung as Johnny shoveled crumbs onto the tray. “YOU’RE BREAKING THE COOKIES!”

“They’re already broken!”

“Guys!” said Jaehyun. He put his hands on their shoulders. “It’s okay. Just leave them.”

“LEAVE THEM?” said Doyoung with horror.

“We made them for you and Yuta,” said Johnny, miserably scooping cookie pieces back onto the tray. “To apologize. Well, so I could apologize. Doyoung doesn’t have anything to apologize for.”

“No,” said Doyoung, “I _don’t_.”

“But he helped me,” said Johnny. “Because I can’t bake for shit.”

“It’s okay,” said Jaehyun. “You—you don’t have to apologize.”

Johnny stopped shoveling. “Did you know he could bake? I had no idea.”

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun.

“See? Jaehyun knew,” said Doyoung.

“How did you know!” said Johnny.

“He made you muffins for your birthday last year,” said Jaehyun.

“Oh my god, yeah,” said Johnny.

“Hey,” Jaehyun said to Doyoung, “why did you make muffins for his birthday but not for my birthday?”

Doyoung, still holding the hot tray a few inches off his lap, said exasperatedly, “Because I wasn’t trying to get you to fall in love with me, Jaehyun.”

“Oh, word,” said Jaehyun.

“Well they worked,” said Johnny.

“What?” Doyoung said.

“The muffins,” said Johnny. “If that was, like, the goal.”

“Oh,” said Doyoung, “so it was the muffins that did it. Noted.”

Johnny blushed. “Well not exactly. I mean, there were several…factors.”

Doyoung was smiling absently. “Mmm.”

Johnny smiled too, glancing down at the spatula and back up at Doyoung. A few seconds of silence passed.

Jaehyun cleared his throat. “So, did you tell us to come over so you could give us the cookies? Because it’s okay. Like, it was a nice thought, but you don’t have to worry.”

Johnny and Doyoung, having snapped out of their shared reverie, started protesting. “But we worked so hard,” said Johnny. “We were baking since like three o’clock.”

“He really wanted to give you guys something to show he was sorry,” said Doyoung.

“I squished the dough with my hands!” said Johnny.

“He did knead the dough with his hands,” said Doyoung.

“You don’t have to give us anything,” said Jaehyun. He sat down on the floor next to them, tucking his feet under him. “I’m serious. If there’s anyone who should be apologizing, it’s us.”

Johnny laughed. “You? What for?”

“For,” Jaehyun said. “For uh. I don’t know, beating you guys to the punch on Instagram and making you think you should take back your confession.”

Johnny looked at Doyoung, grin growing. “That’s on me. And we worked that out already, anyway.”

“We’re over it,” said Doyoung.

“It’s not your fault Yuta confessed faster than I did,” said Johnny.

“And it’s _certainly_ not your fault Johnny decided to pretend the confession wasn’t for me,” said Doyoung, adding, “I mean, what the fuck?”

“And it’s certainly _certainly_ not your fault,” continued Johnny, “that Doyoung didn’t just tell me how he felt instead of messing around for two weeks.”

“Two years, really,” said Doyoung.

“God, that’s the stupidest shit ever,” said Johnny.

“Not as stupid as the shit you pulled,” said Doyoung.

“No, I was including my own shit. It’s collective shit. Shared shit.”

“Ew. Stop saying shit.”

The difference between the weekend and now was like night and day. The two of them were glowing. More than glowing, they were as unsubtle as a fireworks stand on fire. Jaehyun could see it: they didn’t give a damn about the bet or Instagram or the texts anymore; they probably wouldn’t even give a damn if they found out that Jaehyun and Yuta’s relationship had been fake the whole time. Now that they had each other, everything else was small.

Jaehyun hoped the happiness radiating off them would melt the knot in his stomach away. It didn’t. As he left the apartment, two freshly rolled tuna kimbaps in a plastic bag in hand, the knot coiled tighter. Twenty minutes and one subway transfer later, he found himself outside the law school library. The sun had set, and the lights in the windows were warm. Jaehyun went inside and took the elevator to the second floor.

Yuta was in the same corner he always studied in, where the windows looked out over the trees at the back of the building. He sat across from his friend Kun. Their heads were bent over textbooks. Jaehyun wondered if Yuta and Kun were getting closer, and that was why Yuta had spent so much of the week out of the house.

Jaehyun stood in the center of the second floor long enough for Kun to look up and spot him. Kun didn’t immediately smile. First, he touched Yuta’s arm and nodded towards Jaehyun.

Yuta looked across the tables, and his face lit up. Jaehyun started to walk to the corner. Yuta met Jaehyun halfway and threw his arms around him.

“Surprise,” said Jaehyun.

“Where did you come from!” said Yuta.

“Johnny and Doyoung’s.”

“Oh. You did? What did they want?”

“To give us cookies.”

“You’ve got cookies?”

“No. The cookies fell on the floor.”

“What?”

They went back to the table as Jaehyun explained what had happened to the cookies. Yuta pulled out a chair for Jaehyun and made him sit.

“Hi,” said Jaehyun.

“Hey, Jaehyun,” said Kun.

Yuta sat down and said, “So what’s in the bag?”

“Tuna kimbap,” said Jaehyun, fishing out the tinfoiled roll. “Did you eat?”

“No,” said Yuta. “Thanks, you’re amazing. Kun, you want some?”

“No,” said Kun. “I’m okay.”

“We have more,” said Jaehyun, offering his own roll.

“It’s okay,” said Kun, “I’ve got plans to eat later. Thanks.”

“Are you not hungry? My stomach is empty.” Yuta pointed the kimbap in Jaehyun’s direction as he unwrapped the foil around it. “Your timing is impeccable.”

“I try,” said Jaehyun.

“You succeed. Best best friend I’ll have all nine lives.” Yuta bit into the roll of kimbap and chewed.

Jaehyun looked at Yuta, then looked at Kun.

“Oh,” said Yuta, “Kun knows you’re not really my boyfriend.”

“Kun knows?” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah,” said Kun.

Jaehyun was confused. “When…?”

“He told me a couple days ago,” said Kun.

“Oh,” said Jaehyun. “Why?”

Kun looked at Yuta. Yuta had just bitten off a big piece of kimbap. He chewed, studying the kimbap.

“It came up,” said Kun. “You’re a great friend, I never would have agreed to all that.”

Jaehyun felt weird. He looked around. “Where’s your other friend? Joy?”

“You missed her,” said Yuta. “She was here earlier.”

“Oh,” said Jaehyun. “Well…” He pushed back the chair, standing up. “Tell her I say hi the next time you see her.”

Yuta looked up. “You’re leaving already?”

“Um,” said Jaehyun, “I’ve made my delivery, and everything. So I’ll let you guys study.”

“Okay,” said Yuta. “Thanks for coming by.”

“Good seeing you,” Jaehyun said to Kun. Kun nodded. Jaehyun turned to Yuta. “See you at home later?”

Yuta smiled sunnily. “I might be back late. Don’t wait up.”

“Okay,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta didn’t come home until past midnight. Jaehyun was in bed by then, waiting for the sound of him at the front door.

The next day, Jaehyun got home from his morning shift at work as fast as he could. Yuta was still on the couch, looking at his phone. Thank goodness—he hadn’t left for class yet.

“Hi,” said Jaehyun.

“Hiya,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun sat down next to him on the couch. He had wanted to talk to him all morning, all week, really, but now he didn’t know what to talk about. Yuta was scrolling through his phone rapidly. Jaehyun thought about asking what was going on with him and Kun. He couldn’t get himself to say the words. Maybe he didn’t want to know the answer.

“Fair’s today,” Jaehyun said.

“True,” said Yuta. “Are you excited to get dunked?”

“Are you excited to spin cotton candy?” said Jaehyun.

“Excited to not get pied.”

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun. “What do you want to do after that?”

Yuta placed his phone on the armrest. “After the fair? It’ll go to ten o’clock.”

“Uh,” said Jaehyun.

“You mean about the fake boyfriends thing,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun nodded. Yuta stood up. Jaehyun thought for a second that he was leaving the room, but he only went to the window and pushed it open. A warm breeze fluttered in. Then Yuta said, “What are your thoughts?”

“Well,” said Jaehyun, “we can tell everybody the truth. We could also, like, stage a fake breakup and call it a day.”

“Uh huh,” said Yuta. “What else?”

“What else?” said Jaehyun. “I don’t know.”

“We could just not break up,” said Yuta.

“Not break up?”

“We could,” said Yuta, “just, like, stay together. Be together.”

The hot air entering through the window thrummed. Yuta was leaned against the shelf, looking at one of his rings. Jaehyun was pretty sure he had misspoken.

“Be together?” Jaehyun said.

Yuta said, “We could.”

Yuta must be joking. No, he must mean that he wanted to keep fake dating. He thought the whole thing was a big joke. But Jaehyun was ready for it to end. He needed it to end. The lines were too blurred; he needed a clean cut.

“Let’s just,” he heard himself say, “tell everybody we broke up, tomorrow.”

People called out on the street eight floors down. A car honked.

“Yeah,” said Yuta. “No, that’s fine. That’s a good call.”

Jaehyun said, “Uh huh.”

Yuta went to the front door and put on his shoes. “So I’ll see you at the fair in a couple hours, right?”

“Right,” said Jaehyun. His head was spinning. He ran a hand through his hair.

“Great.” Yuta picked up his backpack. “If you beat me there,” he said, “tell Hyuck I’ll be there by 2.”

“Will do,” said Jaehyun. “Do you want me to bring you something to eat?”

“It’s okay,” said Yuta. “I’ll eat there. See you.”

“Bye,” said Jaehyun. Yuta closed the door.

Jaehyun sat on the couch for a few more minutes. Yuta had said that he didn’t want to stop dating. That he didn’t want to stop _fake_ dating? He had said, “We could be together.” He had said those exact words. So casually. He couldn’t possibly mean them like that.

Jaehyun got up and went to the kitchen. He picked up the green watering can from the windowsill. It was empty. He put it under the faucet. The knot in his stomach felt twisty.

What if Yuta did mean it like that?

No. Jaehyun shook his head and shut off the sink. He watered the plants in the kitchen. Then he started on the plants in the living room. When he got to the sunrise succulent by the window, he realized he’d forgotten to tell Yuta good luck on his exam.

_We could stay together. Be together._

What if Yuta did mean it? What if Yuta wanted to be together the same way Jaehyun wanted to be together? Why was that thought so _scary?_ Suddenly Jaehyun realized that the sunrise succulent’s small pot was overflowing. Dirt ran in rivulets down the side. Jaehyun swore and put down the watering can. Water was dripping onto the shelf. Jaehyun ran into the kitchen for paper towels.

On Sunday night, Yuta had asked if the kisses had been real. And he’d said—what was it that he’d said? _I wish I had your acting skills._ Jaehyun dried the shelf and carried the plant to the sink to drain. When Jaehyun had kissed him, Yuta kissed back every time. And Yuta had kissed his cheek and his hand and his forehead. And he hadn’t pulled away when they woke up wrapped in each other; Jaehyun had pulled away. And he’d held Jaehyun’s hand when they stood alone in front of the window looking out at the sea. And he’d looked for Jaehyun first at the top of the cliff. He’d always looked for Jaehyun first.

Everything seemed to come together in a split second.

“Yuta wants me,” Jaehyun told the sunrise plant.

It blushed up at him pinkly.

“Yuta wants me,” Jaehyun whispered again. Saying it was electrifying. And terrifying. And Jaehyun had fucked up spectacularly.

Yuta didn’t reply to Jaehyun’s texts until well after his exam let out. He replied to Jaehyun’s “ _Omg good luck!!_ ” with “ _thanks!!_ ” and to Jaehyun’s “ _hey has the exam started yet??_ ” with “ _started and ended!_ ” Then he replied to “ _can i talk to you before the fair starts????_ ” with a “ _sureee let’s meet up there_ ” and now Jaehyun was on the subway and the pit in his stomach had spread throughout his whole body, and he was scared. He was so scared he was almost trembling. Everything he’d ever wanted was suddenly possible, and the thought of grasping it was petrifying. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t Yuta he was scared of. It wasn’t even Yuta rejecting him, or telling him that he was wrong. He was pretty sure he could handle that. He’d assumed rejection all his life. That possibility wasn’t nearly as daunting as the opposite.

“Jeong Jaehyun!” called Johnny, spreading his arms as Jaehyun stepped onto the grassy plaza full of half-pitched tents, people carrying boxes, and college kids with clipboards telling other college kids in trucks where to back up. “Come here, come here,” said Johnny, putting an arm around Jaehyun’s shoulder. “HEY HYUCK, I FOUND JAEHYUN!”

Hyuck’s voice rose like a ball being tossed in the air from behind a stand. “FINALLY!”

“He’s a little stressed,” said Johnny, pulling Jaehyun around the stand, “don’t mind him.”

“Do you know where Yuta is?” said Jaehyun as they found Hyuck standing over a card table, scribbling on a huge paper map with blue marker.

“Yeah,” said Hyuck, “Nakamoto’s doing the pies. The dunk tank’s filling with water right now, did you bring a swimsuit and everything?”

“Yuta’s doing the pies?” said Jaehyun. “I thought he wasn’t…”

“He’s not doing the booth,” said Johnny. “He’s just filling the pie tins with cream, so I don’t have to be the one to assemble the instruments of my own destruction.”

“Ha,” said Jaehyun, “I guess I should help, because like, if not for me, you would have won the bet, now that Doyoung’s your boyfriend. Can you show me where—”

“Well it doesn’t really have anything to do with you,” said Johnny. “If I had just confessed before Yuta, I’d have won.”

“How?” said Jaheyun. “The bet was to see who could get a boyfriend first.”

Hyuck stopped making Xs and looked up from his map. Johnny said, “No? The bet was to see who would confess first.”

Jaehyun said, “Confess to who?”

“What do you mean, to who?” said Hyuck. “Johnny had to confess to Doyoung, and Yuta had to confess to you.”

That wasn’t what Yuta had told him in the Gongcha. “Why would you make Yuta confess to me in a bet…?”

Johnny squinted at him and Hyuck said, “Because? I was sick to death of listening to him complain about how badly he wanted to date you?”

Jaehyun whispered, “Really?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Hyuck. “Did Yuta never tell you why I put them up to all this? Honest to god, it was constant with these two.”

“Yuta was worse than me, though,” said Johnny.

“‘Worse’ is subjective,” said Hyuck, “but at least you weren’t in denial. Yuta would be like, ‘boo hoo, why won’t Jaehyun take me on a cute romantic date, I could fall in love with him so fast if he’d just give me the chance,’ and then he’d turn around and be like ‘JUST KIDDING!’ and we’d be like, ‘no? You’re not?’”

“He was so fucking annoying,” said Johnny.

“So were you, Mr. Why-Doesn’t-Doyoung-Love-Me,” said Hyuck.

“I never said why doesn’t Doyoung love me,” said Johnny.

“You literally said that one time.”

“Where is he?” said Jaehyun. “Yuta?”

“Johnny, can you show him? Jaehyun, come back after you guys fill 50 pies, that should be enough to start,” said Hyuck, bending over his map.

“To _start?_ ” said Jaehyun.

“Here,” said Johnny, pulling Jaehyun past the card table to an open stretch of grass. He pointed down the plaza between rows of booths and tents. “You see the red sign for the go fish booth?”

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun.

“Two or three down is the pie booth. There’s a tent behind it, it’s blue. He’s in there.”

“Okay,” said Jaehyun, “thanks,” and his feet took him through the sun-painted grass, past the red sign, past two booths, to a stand with a chair and a sign over the top that said, “PIE ME!” Behind it, an opening fluttered in the blue tarp. Jaehyun put his hand through and pulled the tarp back.

“Hey,” said Yuta.

He sat on the ground in the center of the small tent, scooping cream out of a tub the size of a cooler and dropping it into pie tins circled around him. At his back, there was a shelf of trays half-filled with pies. He was using a pink ladle that Jaehyun recognized from Johnny and Hyuck’s house. There was cream smeared on his temple, and on the back of his hand. He was the most beautiful thing Jaehyun had ever seen.

Yuta’s cream-scooping arm slowed. “Are you okay?”

Jaehyun was not okay at all.

“Yeah,” he said.

Yuta looked him up and down. “You look like somebody died.”

“No,” said Jaehyun. He shook his head. “No.”

Yuta frowned.

“How was your exam?” Jaehyun said.

“Fine,” said Yuta. “How was your afternoon?”

“Good,” said Jaehyun.

“Did you say you wanted to talk earlier?”

“Yeah.”

Yuta waited. Jaehyun could feel that he was breathing a little too fast. He cleared his throat.

“Hey,” said Yuta, “is this about—”

“I saw Hyuck and Johnny,” said Jaehyun. He stepped inside, letting the tarp fall behind him. Yuta’s pie tins stood between them like a semicircle of fluffy mines.

“Uh huh?” said Yuta.

“They sent me to help you,” said Jaehyun. “I mean, I wanted to help you.”

“Oh,” said Yuta, “good. But I only have one spoon.”

Jaehyun said, “They told me something.”

“Hyuck and Johnny?”

“Yeah. They said the bet you and Johnny made wasn’t to see who could get a boyfriend first,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta’s eyes went wide.

“They said that actually, it was just who could confess first?” said Jaehyun. “To me and Doyoung?”

Yuta swallowed, and he looked down. He wiped his forehead, smearing the cream further. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I should have just been straight up with you.” He laughed clumsily and began to spoon cream into the tins again. “But it’s whatever, we can forget about it. I know you don’t feel that way, anyway, so, yeah, no worries.”

Jaehyun’s throat hurt, like wanting to cry. But he didn’t want to cry. He wanted to speak.

“But what if I did?” he said.

Yuta stopped spooning. “Huh?”

“What if I did feel that way about you?” said Jaehyun. Just like that, the words came easily, as easily as breathing. “What if I don’t want to stop all this after today, and I want to keep dating you, and I always wanted to date you, and be your boyfriend, not your fake boyfriend but your real boyfriend, and I always wanted to be with you and be more to you—”

Yuta had stood up. “You want to be with me?”

“—but what if I was scared?” said Jaehyun.

Yuta stammered. “Jae—Jaehyun—scared of _what?_ ”

In the moment he asked, Jaehyun knew the answer.

“Of losing you,” he said.

Yuta looked down at all the pie tins around him. “No, no, no, Jaehyun, you’re not going to lose me. You know how I feel, I’ve been…”

“What if we were together and then we broke up?” Jaehyun said.

Yuta stopped.

“If we get together, and it doesn’t work out, we can’t go back.” Jaehyun was shaking. He hadn’t even been aware any of this was inside him until now. “But if we just stay the way we are, we’ll always be the way we are, and we’ll always have each other, and there will never be a time in our lives when…”

“When we’re not in each other’s lives,” said Yuta.

He stood under a thin strip of sun coming through a hole in the tarp. When he’d risen from the ground a minute ago, it had cast the edge of a halo over his head.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta said, “I knew I wasn’t imagining it when you kissed me on the cliff.”

Jaehyun closed his mouth and tried to breathe slower.

Yuta took a wide step over the pies, moving out of the light. Suddenly he was very close to Jaehyun. Jaehyun stepped back. Yuta looked as if he were going to reach for Jaehyun, but he didn’t. He just smiled a little.

“Okay,” he said, “how long have we known each other?”

Jaehyun said, “All our lives?” His voice broke on the last word.

“Yeah. And when we were little,” said Yuta, “and we didn’t see each other all year, what happened in the summers?”

Jaehyun cleared his throat. “We were still best friends.”

“And when we didn’t see each other for four years in high school, what happened after that?”

“We were still best friends,” Jaehyun said again.

Yuta nodded. He was twisting his hands. His smile, though, was luminous like a promise. “Did you ever feel like you were losing me then?”

“No,” Jaehyun said.

“Why?” Yuta said.

“Because,” Jaehyun said, “we…we had shared so much of our childhood, and…you were a part of me.”

“Right,” said Yuta. “We’ll always be a part of each other. Even if things change. We’ll always be best friends. I trust you to stay in my life no matter what happens, and, well, I know I haven’t done a perfect job of deserving your trust lately but…”

“I trust you,” said Jaehyun. “I trust you.”

“Okay,” said Yuta, “then you don’t have to be afraid of losing me, because I won’t let you. Ever.”

Jaehyun’s throat was closed. Yuta was right. Jaehyun was scared, but there were only a few handfuls of centimeters between them, and Yuta trusted him despite everything, and he was right and so beautiful.

“So,” said Yuta, “will you tell me how you really feel about me now?”

Jaehyun caught his breath. He wasn’t shaking anymore.

“Because I’m all you,” said Yuta. “I’m head over heels for you, Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun pushed back Yuta’s hair and bent his face to Yuta’s. He felt the fade of Yuta’s undercut, and the way Yuta’s lips met his intently, deliberately. He felt Yuta step closer to him, and Yuta’s body in his arms. He felt Yuta kiss him and it was like he’d never felt it before.

“YOU HEADASSES WERE LYING THIS WHOLE TIME—!”

Hyuck burst into the tarp through the flap. “Hyuck, let them…” Johnny was saying, but he was too late. As Jaehyun and Yuta jumped back, Yuta stepped into a pie. His arms pinwheeled. Jaehyun grabbed for him, stepping in pie tins himself. Yuta crashed into the pie shelf. Jaehyun slipped, his ankle twisting. The shelf was going down. It was bringing the entire tent down. Jaehyun heaved Yuta out of the way so Yuta wouldn’t break his back on the shelf, and he came down on it himself. The tarp fluttered onto them, covering them neatly.

Jaehyun rolled onto the ground next to Yuta. It was sticky with cream.

“ _Motherfucker!_ ” Hyuck yelled.

“Guys, hang on,” said Johnny.

Yuta pushed the tarp away from Jaehyun’s head. “Oh my god,” he said. He tried to throw it off them, but it wouldn’t lift. He was laughing. “Oh my god. Jaehyun.”

“Are you okay?” said Jaehyun.

“I’m fine. You pulled a fucking Hercules and saved me. Are you okay?”

The left side of Jaehyun’s back ached, and his ankle was tingling. He barely noticed.

“Yuta, I love you,” he said, and all the nerves in his body finally untangled like a flock of birds’ wings opening.

The tarp came away and sunlight flooded Yuta’s face. Johnny and Hyuck were peeling the tent off them. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU TWO?” Hyuck screamed.

“Hyuck, shut up,” said Jaehyun. “Yuta, you were right about the beach and everything, I’m in love with you, I’ve never not been in love with you. I’ve loved you as long as I can remember.”

Yuta pushed the shelf away from Jaehyun. “I love you too.” He hooked his arm under Jaehyun’s shoulder and pulled him up and said, “More than anything in the world,” and then he kissed him, hands soft and careful on Jaehyun’s back.

“Are you guys all right?” said Johnny.

“Yeah,” said Yuta, looking into Jaehyun’s eyes and smiling.

“You fucking liars,” said Johnny.

“Sorry,” Yuta said indifferently.

“ALL OF YOU,” shouted Hyuck, “EVERYONE IN THIS FRIEND GROUP, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU, IS SO GODDAMN EMBARRASSING!”

“What the hell happened?” said Doyoung, arriving with wide eyes next to Johnny.

“MARK!” Hyuck screamed, stomping into the grassy stretch and waving his arms as Yuta helped Jaehyun out of the mess of tins and tarp. “MARK! HEY! MARK LEE! COME HERE! YES, RIGHT NOW!”

“Are you sure your back’s okay?” said Yuta, running his hands over Jaehyun’s arms and shoulders.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun. “You have Cool Whip all over you.”

“So do you,” said Yuta.

Behind Yuta, Johnny raised the shelf back up. As he did, another half-dozen pies slid to the ground.

“MY PIES,” Hyuck said again, stretching out his hands.

“Stop calling them your pies,” said Yuta. “They were my pies. I made them, and I deserve them.”

“Oh my god,” said Johnny, “I won.”

“What?” said Doyoung as Johnny took both his hands.

“I won!” said Johnny, dancing Doyoung around the cream-splattered tarp. “I was right the whole time! I won! I won! I won!”

“Okay, you won,” said Doyoung, stopping him. “Won what?”

“The pie booth bet,” said Johnny.

Doyoung frowned. “Where you and Yuta had to confess…?”

“Yeah!” said Hyuck. He seized Mark, who had just run up to them looking out-of-breath, by the collar and yelled, “Yujae were FAKING THEIR RELATIONSHIP! THIS WHOLE TIME!”

“Wait, wait,” said Doyoung.

“How long were you listening?” said Jaehyun.

“Long enough!” Hyuck said.

“Listening to what?” said Mark.

“Wait, so you weren’t actually dating?” said Doyoung, pointing at them.

“Not before,” said Jaehyun.

“Huh?” said Mark.

“Long story short,” said Yuta, stooping to pick up pie tins, “I’m a big dumbass, like Johnny-level dumbass, and I told Jaehyun that I had a bet with Johnny to see who could get a boyfriend the fastest, and I asked if he could be my fake boyfriend until today so I wouldn’t have to get pied, and then I pretended to date him for two weeks without telling him I wanted to actually date him.”

“All that just so you wouldn’t have to confess to him!” said Hyuck, stepping away as if he couldn’t bear to lay eyes on the scene. “Oh my god!”

“So then,” Mark said, pointing between them, “Jaehyun started to like you when you were fake dating? That’s like a movie.”

“Oh, no,” said Jaehyun, “I was in love with him the whole time too.”

Mark’s jaw dropped. Hyuck grabbed his shoulders. “These people! All four of them, Mark! Sitting on their feelings! Doing nothing about them! FOR YEARS!”

“Why?” said Mark, looking genuinely confused.

Hyuck planted a kiss on him. “Thank god you told me you liked me after we hung out a few times, because apparently confessing is going out of fashion or SOMETHING! _”_

“Okay,” said Doyoung, putting a hand to his temple, “I, I get the fake dating—well, I don’t get it, but I understand what happened—but how did you guys collapse an entire tent?”

“Yuta walked in my pies!” wailed Hyuck.

“They were never your pies!” said Yuta.

“He walked in the pies because Hyuck and Johnny were _listening_ ,” said Jaehyun, “like creeps, outside the tent while Yuta and I were telling each other how we really felt, and then they scared us and Yuta and I basically fell over.”

“You eavesdropped on them?” said Doyoung, rounding on Johnny.

“I didn’t! Well, I did,” said Johnny, flapping the stack of tins he’d picked up, “only for a second, when Jaehyun was telling Yuta he knew about the real bet, and then Jaehyun said something about wanting to be Yuta’s real boyfriend and I pulled Hyuck away, because things were getting intense, only I couldn’t keep Hyuck away for that long, and I followed him back and we heard Yuta telling Jaehyun that he should tell him his real feelings and that he was head over heels for him or something.”

“You wanted to come back and listen more, too!” said Hyuck.

“You didn’t have to bust in there and scare the shit out of them, though, Hyuck, Jesus,” said Johnny.

“Why did you come here in the first place?” said Jaehyun.

Hyuck’s mouth opened wide. He looked at Johnny, who said, “THE TANK!”

“What about it?” said Mark as Johnny took off running.

“We were going to tell you that the dunk tank was almost full!” said Hyuck, taking a few steps after Johnny. “Jaehyun, come on, the hose is still running, it might be overflowing!”

Jaehyun was cross-legged on the ground. He put a hand under him and tried to stand. Immediately, he fell back on his butt. It was no good—his ankle was still throbbing. “Go ahead, I’ll come over there in a bit.”

“What’s wrong?” said Hyuck and Yuta at the same time.

“Rolled my ankle,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta dropped his stack of pie tins and went to Jaehyun. Hyuck said, “Ugh! This fair hasn’t even started and it’s already a disaster! How bad is the pain on a scale of one to ten? Should I drive you to the hospital? I can get us there in fifteen minutes if traffic’s low.”

“You don’t have a car,” said Mark.

“We’ll borrow Lucas’s,” said Hyuck.

“Hyuckie, it’s fine,” said Jaehyun. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just need to stay off it for a minute.”

“You can’t do the dunk tank with a sprained ankle,” said Yuta. “You have to climb in and out and shit.”

“It’s not sprained,” said Jaehyun, while Yuta pulled Jaehyun’s foot into his lap to inspect it, “it’s just twisted.”

“Aren’t those the same thing?” said Doyoung.

“It’ll be better in a minute,” said Jaehyun.

“It’s swollen!” said Yuta.

“It’s not—AHH,” said Jaehyun as Yuta poked the red place on his ankle.

“Oh fuck! I’m sorry!” said Yuta.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you didn’t hurt me,” said Jaehyun.

“You literally shouted in pain,” said Doyoung.

“It’s definitely sprained,” said Mark.

“Oh NO!” moaned Hyuck. “I should have just left you alone to kiss in peace!”

“It’s not your fault,” said Jaehyun, while Yuta said, “Yeah, you should’ve!”

Doyoung was helping Mark gather the rods that had been holding up the tent. He planted a rod in the ground decisively. “I’ll do the dunk tank.”

Hyuck gasped. Jaehyun said, “No.”

“Somebody’s gotta do it,” said Doyoung, “and it’s not gonna be you.”

“I’ll do it!” said Yuta.

“Nah,” said Mark, “you have to take Jaehyun home and get a cold compress on his ankle. That shit is inflamed.”

Yuta looked down at the puffy ankle. “You’re right. I’ll call a taxi.”

“No!” said Jaehyun. “I don’t want to go home! I want to do the dunk tank!”

“Babe, can you even walk?” said Yuta.

Jaehyun held out his hands, and Yuta helped him up. Jaehyun tried to put weight on his ankle. “Ow,” he said, lifting his foot up fast.

“Yeah, no way,” said Mark.

“It’s okay,” said Doyoung, “I got this.”

Hyuck said, “Okay, Doie, this is all very valiant of you, but who will handle the dart balloons if you do the dunk tank?”

“You can find somebody, right?” said Doyoung. “Won’t it be easier to find someone to help with the dart balloons than the dunk tank?”

“Maybe not,” said Hyuck. “Hang on, I have an idea.”

He ran into the grass. He looked around, turning right and left. Then he yelled, “NAJAEMIIIIIIIIN!”

A blond head emerged from behind a booth across from them. “Leedongyuuuck!”

“Who are those two kids you know with the YouTube channel?” Hyuck said.

“YouTube channel?”

“Where they film themselves doing random stupid shit and upload it? You know, that video you showed me where they were throwing eggs at each other!”

“Oh, Chenle and Jisung, yeah.”

“Any chance they’d be interested in working the dunk tank and-or the pie booth from 4 to 10 today in exchange for free food?” said Hyuck.

“I don’t know, but I can find out!”

“Yeah,” said Hyuck, turning back to them, “the channel’s called Chenji’s Here and There or something, it’s actually hilarious.”

“Oh, Chenji’s This and That?” said Yuta.

“Yeah!” said Hyuck, snapping his fingers. “That’s it.”

“My little sister loves those videos,” said Yuta.

Jaemin jogged over from the opposite booth, holding up his phone. “Hey! They said they’re in!”

“YES!” screamed Hyuck, throwing his arms around Jaemin.

Yuta pulled Jaehyun’s arm over his own shoulders and gripped his wrist. “Okay,” he murmured, “let’s get you home.”

Yuta’s body was warm against Jaehyun’s side. Hyuck was talking excitedly about the possibility of the YouTube guys posting about the fair on their socials. Jaehyun wanted to stay and help Hyuck with the fair, but suddenly there was nothing he’d rather do than be back in the apartment with only Yuta and the quiet and the plants.

“RICE!” Mark shouted in English after them, as he and Doyoung raised the small tent back up. “REST, ICE, COMPRESSION, ELEVATION!”

“Got it,” Jaehyun called over his shoulder.

“What did he say?” said Yuta as they reached the sidewalk.

“Uh, that I should rest it, and ice, and put it on a pillow and stuff,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta wrapped a hand around Jaehyun’s waist. “Mark’s pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, maybe he should have taken you home.”

Jaehyun stopped. “You want to stay?”

“Jaehyun, I was kidding.”

“Oh,” said Jaehyun, relieved.

“You think I’m going to wait eight hours to get you alone?” said Yuta, shading his eyes against the sunlight as he looked up the busy street. “Hell no. I’ve waited long enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and you thought johndo were stupid  
> sorry for the angst lol stick around for chapter 6 it will be fun <3


	6. Chapter 6

Yuta peeled off Jaehyun’s cream-covered shoes and forced Jaehyun to lie down on the couch as soon as they got home. He’d been reading online about how to care for a twisted ankle in the taxi. He ran around the apartment collecting pillows and stacked them under Jaehyun’s foot. Then he went to the kitchen to make an ice compress. He asked if Jaehyun wanted a snack. Jaehyun said no. Yuta pressed him, saying something about protein, before asking if he would drink some water at least. Jaehyun agreed, and Yuta hummed with satisfaction. Jaehyun closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of Yuta rattling around in the kitchen. A drawer sliding shut. A cabinet door opening. Glasses on the shelf with their raindrop-like clinking. The sounds of home.

“Why is Ana in the sink?”

Jaehyun opened his eyes. “Did you call our sunrise plant Ana?”

“Yeah,” Yuta said.

“Why? I mean, it sounds nice, I like it.”

“Well it’s short for…you know. Her real name. Anacamper…”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jaehyun. “ _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_.”

“Yeah, that.”

“I love it,” said Jaehyun. “Ana. That’s cute.”

“And she’s here because…?”

“Her pot overflowed earlier when I was watering,” said Jaehyun. “I put her in the sink to drain.”

“All afternoon? Doesn’t she need sun?”

Yuta came out of the kitchen with an ice pack and a dish towel draped over one arm, the sunrise succulent hugged in the other, and a glass of water clutched in both hands. He put the glass and the ice pack next to Jaehyun’s foot on the coffee table.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun, “I kind of forgot about her.”

Yuta nudged the succulent into the open place on the shelf between the other plants. “ _Forgot_ about her? You never forget about your plants.”

“I did today,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta knelt down beside the coffee table, wrapping the towel around the ice pack. “Why?”

“I was thinking about the thing you said this afternoon,” said Jaehyun, staring into the glass of water, “and uh…I guess I freaked out.”

Yuta smiled down at the ice pack. He looked shy suddenly. “Freaked out how?”

Jaehyun remembered his head spinning, his thoughts getting away from him. He remembered trying to rein them back, but suddenly they were escaping his grip, going places he had never allowed himself to go. And then he had given in and gone with them.

“I realized how you felt about me,” said Jaehyun. “And my head exploded a little bit.”

Yuta’s smile puckered. He lifted Jaehyun’s leg and drew the towel under it. Then he began to wrap the ice pack around Jaehyun’s ankle. “Does this hurt?”

“No,” said Jaehyun, because the pain was nothing compared to Yuta’s touch.

Yuta nodded. He looped the towel around Jaehyun’s foot again. “So then what tipped you off?”

“Tipped me off?” said Jaehyun.

“That I had feelings for you,” said Yuta. “Was it when I said we should keep dating after the fair? Or when I asked if the kisses on the beach were real? Or, _or_ , was it when we woke up on Sunday morning holding each other? OR—”

“Okay!” said Jaehyun. “I know, I was in denial. I’m sorry.”

Yuta tucked the end of the towel under Jaehyun’s heel. He lowered it back to the pillows. Then he sat down on the couch, facing Jaehyun.

“I’m sorry too,” Yuta said. “I should have just told you.”

Now that Jaehyun knew, moments where Yuta had shown how he felt were coming back to him. They had been coming back all day. “I should have listened better. I was so busy trying to hide my feelings, I just…totally overlooked yours.”

Yuta smiled gently. “You had your denial glasses on. You were scared.”

“Not of you,” said Jaehyun. “Not of us. I was never…”

“I know,” said Yuta. “You were just scared of change. That’s okay. Maybe you stopped trusting yourself at some point or something. It’s been a weird few weeks.” He laughed softly. “A weird few years. If I’d just been clearer about how I felt…”

“But you were clear,” said Jaehyun. “You asked me if the kisses were real, and when I said no, you said you wished you were as good an actor as me. And I told myself you were afraid I was catching feelings for you.”

“Wow. Yeah, that’s dumb as fuck.”

“You told me,” said Jaehyun, “you told me on the cliff that nothing’s any good without me. You called me baby when nobody was even around. You held my hand when no one was around.”

“And I kissed you,” said Yuta.

“Well,” said Jaehyun, “to be fair, _I_ kissed _you_ most of those times...”

“But I kissed you back,” said Yuta earnestly. He shifted forward, folding his legs under him. “Jaehyun, I—I always wanted to kiss you, except I didn’t always really know what it was, and then we were doing this fake boyfriends thing and I was so happy and I wanted to kiss you more, but I was afraid I’d be taking advantage of the fake boyfriends thing. And you were so weird about it the first time we kissed at home. So I just waited for you to kiss me and when you did, I poured my heart into it hoping you’d feel it.”

“Really?” Jaehyun whispered.

Yuta’s laugh was hesitant. “You never felt it?”

“Oh, I did,” said Jaehyun. “I felt it.” The realer the kisses had felt, the harder it had been to forget that they were fake. Or at least, that he thought they were fake. “I felt it, but then my brain kept reminding me you were acting.”

“Ah yes,” said Yuta. “The denial glasses were on.”

Jaehyun said, “I guess, yeah.”

“Okay, so, what finally got through to you this afternoon?”

“What you said,” said Jaehyun, “before you left for class. I know my knee-jerk reaction at first was to be like, no, he doesn’t mean it, because denial, and also I was pretty exhausted from lying to you, and from the fake boyfriend thing and pretending to be pretending. And I just wanted it all to be over. So I didn’t hear you. I didn’t listen. I’m sorry. But after you left, I missed you so much, like, more than normal, and I couldn’t explain away what had happened and…yeah, my denial glasses got smashed, I guess.”

“And you left Ana in the sink,” said Yuta.

“Right.”

Yuta sighed. “Thank god.”

“Thank god I left Ana in the sink?” said Jaehyun.

“No, dummy,” said Yuta, “thank god your denial glasses got smashed. It was about time something I said stuck. How many times was I going to have to tell you that you’re the most gorgeous human being on Earth for you to get the hint? No, I take that back, it would have been an infinite number of times. You got so used to me complimenting you that you didn’t even react to it.”

“What?” said Jaehyun. “I never got used to you complimenting me.”

“Or all the times I said shit like, ‘You’re my everything,’ and, I don’t know, ‘Promise we’ll always be together,’ and you just laughed and said ‘me too’?” said Yuta. “Come on.”

Jaehyun’s heart felt full and taut, like an over-blown balloon. “You meant all those things that way?”

Yuta’s lips quirked to contain a smile. “Oh, yeah. I mean, I didn’t _know_ that I meant all those things that way, not for a while. But also, I did know.”

“Hyuck told me,” Jaehyun said, “Hyuck told me you used to complain about me not dating you. And then you’d be like, hahaha, just joking.”

“Yeah…” Yuta shrugged. “Maybe I knew somewhere in me the whole time. It’s just that, like, you’re…you’re Jaehyun. You’re my bestie. It made sense that I loved you most. So I couldn’t really pinpoint it for a while.”

Jaehyun couldn’t help but smile.

“And I always had this idea in my head,” said Yuta, “about how in love with you I would be if we were together, or you felt that way, or something. Which is mostly the same as being in love with you. But I didn’t really understand that at the time.”

“So basically, you were in denial almost as much as I was,” said Jaehyun.

“True. Yeah. That’s fair.”

“Then what broke your denial glasses?” said Jaehyun.

Yuta let out a little giggle. He was blushing, and he looked the most beautiful he’d ever been. Jaehyun couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Yuta shy or embarrassed. There was something breathtaking about the fact that he could make Yuta blush.

“Everything?” said Yuta. “It was slow. Hyuck calling me out was one thing. I mean, he and Johnny always teased me about having a thing for you, but when he said we had to confess and the thought scared the shit out of me… And then I was having so much fun telling everyone you were my boyfriend, like, too much fun, and I knew that I was having too much fun, and I knew I should stop telling you to kiss me because I didn’t really mean it as a joke…”

“And then we did kiss,” said Jaehyun.

“Uh huh, and I wanted to again, really bad, and then we were at the beach! And we kept holding hands, and it felt so good, and you kissed me again in the water… God.” Yuta laughed quietly. “I just wanted the whole thing to be real. I kept going back and forth between checking that it was still fake and forgetting that it was fake.”

Jaehyun thought of Yuta kissing him in the ocean and saying Jaehyun was a genius, telling him he was amazing and staring at him in the dark. “You forgot it was fake?”

“Almost, yeah,” said Yuta. “When we woke up, you know, in the bed, I…I was so…”

He stopped, as if unable to find the words.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun. “Me too.”

“You were talking in your sleep,” said Yuta. “I thought I heard you say my name, and then I thought I only heard that because I wanted to hear it.”

“You probably did hear it,” said Jaehyun.

“I thought you said stay,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun nodded. “I probably did.”

“I told myself I was crazy,” said Yuta. “But at the same time, I didn’t really think I was crazy. Something felt different.”

Jaehyun remembered. He had felt like something was different on Sunday, too. He hadn’t known at the time, but it was there. “So that was when you realized? Sunday morning?”

“Realized I was in love with you?” Yuta put his head back a little, as if to think, his smile growing. “No. It was before that. And after.”

“Before and after?” said Jaehyun.

“That day,” said Yuta, “on the cliff—I mean, I knew how I felt by then, mostly. But when you got vertigo, and you couldn’t even open your water bottle, it was like the only thing I wanted in the entire world was to make you feel better. I would have done anything. I remember thinking, shit, I’ve fallen so hard for my best friend that seeing him get vertigo is practically giving me vertigo.”

Jaehyun laughed. “You did make me feel better,” he said. “You were perfect. You make everything else go away.” 

Yuta bit his lip, looking down, blushing again. Jaehyun was close to kissing him, but he wasn’t finished asking questions yet. “When you said before and after,” said Jaehyun, “what about before?”

“Well,” said Yuta, “the first time it really hit me was in the Gongcha. I was all ready to confess to you because of Hyuck and Johnny, and then I saw you and froze up and, well, bullshitted a bunch of stuff about making a bet with them to get a boyfriend.”

“You froze up?” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah, big time,” said Yuta. “And listen, I was fully prepared to confess that day. I was like, this has gone on long enough, I’m going to tell Jaehyun that I think we could be more than friends, and I’ll feel better knowing what he says. And then I walk in the Gongcha, and you’re there, and…” He gestured up and down. “…beautiful, and I’m like, holy fuck, I might truly deeply like this man, and what if I more than like him? And my brain just freezes solid, and boom, suddenly we’re fake boyfriends and what have I done?”

“Wait,” said Jaehyun, “but why did you freeze up? What made you realize all that?”

“I told you,” said Yuta. “It was because you were there.”

Jaehyun was still confused. He tilted his head. Yuta batted his shoulder with a noncommittal fist. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know how you make people tongue-tied.”

Jaehyun didn’t know or care about other people. “I make you tongue-tied?”

Yuta opened his mouth like a fish. For a second, he looked furious. Then he caught Jaehyun’s face and pulled Jaehyun’s mouth to his. Jaehyun tried to meet him, but Yuta was racing ahead of him, demanding, and giving as much as he demanded. Something surged in Jaehyun—something more than want, something bigger than himself. Like an electrical current from an outside source. He braced a hand against the couch and returned Yuta’s impatience.

Almost immediately Yuta yielded, receiving the kiss like night receiving starlight. Jaehyun lost his balance a little and looked at Yuta in surprise.

“That’s how you make me feel,” Yuta said. “Do you get it? You make me crazy.”

Jaehyun wished he’d known a long time ago how it would feel to hear that. If he’d known, if he’d even taken a second to think of it, to imagine it, he would have risked anything. “You make me feel like that too.”

“Jaehyun.” Yuta’s face was still very close to Jaehyun’s.

“Yeah?”

“What was it that I said earlier, exactly?” Yuta said. “The thing that got through to you.”

“That we could be together,” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah,” said Yuta, “that.”

Jaehyun thought Yuta would continue, but he didn’t. He just looked at Jaehyun like he was waiting. It took all Jaehyun’s patience to speak before kissing him.

“Let’s be together,” said Jaehyun. “Let me be your boyfriend. Please.”

“Yeah,” said Yuta, “yes, be my boyfriend.”

Yuta surrendered to another kiss, his hand trailing from Jaehyun’s cheek down his arm to intertwine their fingers. It felt like Jaehyun had been granted some impossible wish, some magic power. He was breathing underwater. He was flying like in dreams.

“How long did you,” said Jaehyun, “have that, that idea in your head? Us together?”

“It started when we went to college,” said Yuta. His voice strained, like he hadn’t caught his breath. “But the years went by and it got bigger and bigger…”

Even though he was breathless, even though he was still talking, he slipped back into the kiss like a habit. Jaehyun lifted his ice-wrapped foot off the coffee table and bent his knee so he could turn to Yuta.

“Your ankle.”

“Screw my ankle.”

Jaehyun let their knitted hands be trapped between their chests as he put his free arm around Yuta and pulled Yuta to him. Yuta’s heart beat against the back of his hand. The taste of him was becoming more and more unknown. Like an ocean revealing its depth. At some point it had seemed familiar, but that had only been the surface.

“How long was it for you?” Yuta said.

“All my life.”

A small laugh came out of him. “You… You really…”

“What?” Jaehyun said.

Yuta pulled back just enough to look at him. His hand was flat on Jaehyun’s chest now. The evening sunlight was a brief orange square on the wall and the plants.

“Love me,” Yuta said.

Jaehyun’s heart broke. He touched Yuta’s cheek.

“I should have told you years ago,” Jaehyun said. “You should have always known how much I love you. You deserve all the love in the world, you deserve to be loved.”

“Then do it,” Yuta whispered. “Love me.”

Jaehyun kissed him once on the lips. Then he kissed the corner of his jaw.

“I will,” he said. He kissed him again. “I do.”

Yuta’s forehead fell onto Jaehyun’s shoulder. Jaehyun kissed the place where his neck and shoulder came together. His skin glowed faintly, tattooed for one long moment with indirect sun.

Yuta insisted on carrying Jaehyun to bed on his back that night. He had been helping him all evening, bringing him dinner, walking him to the bathroom. He had even been doing things that Jaehyun didn’t need him to do, like turning on the water for the shower, and after Jaehyun caught his hand so he didn’t leave, massaging shampoo into Jaehyun’s hair under the running water. Jaehyun asked if Yuta knew it was his ankle that was incapacitated and not his hands. Yuta shushed him and told him to close his eyes so shampoo didn’t run in.

“This is kind of fun,” said Yuta after half-dropping, half-tossing Jaehyun onto his bed and running back out to the kitchen to get him a glass of water. “Like, not that your ankle’s sprained, but that I get to take care of you. You wouldn’t let me otherwise.”

“Hm.” Jaehyun was trying to position his foot comfortably on the stack of pillows Yuta had brought in from the living room. “Well you’ll have to let me take care of you after I’m better.”

“What?” Yuta laughed. He went to the end of the bed and fixed the pillow stack. “I’m not planning on spraining my ankle the second yours heals.”

“No,” said Jaehyun. “You won’t be hurt, I’m just going to take care of you and do all the stuff you’re doing now. Except for this thing with the pillows.”

Yuta sat next to him on the edge of the bed. “But you already do take care of me,” he said, brushing Jaehyun’s hair off his forehead. “You already have.”

He said it so prettily that Jaehyun’s heart lurched, as if he were watching himself jump over the edge of the cliff in Incheon.

“How did I get this lucky,” he whispered.

Yuta rolled his eyes. “Well I could be asking myself the same—”

“I feel like,” Jaehyun said, “I feel like it’s too good to be true.”

Yuta looked at him carefully, hand pausing. Then he said, “I think you told yourself for a long time that it was too good to be true. Maybe it’ll take a second to get used to it.”

Jaehyun swallowed, nodding. “You’re right.”

Yuta got off the bed and knelt so his face was close to Jaehyun’s. He started smoothing back Jaehyun’s hair again. “Plus you always get that little voice in your head telling you that something’s bound to go wrong when there’s no reason for anything to go wrong,” he said, grinning, and it wasn’t a making-light grin but an it’s-okay grin.

Jaehyun attempted a smile. “Yeah. I guess there’s some of that in there.”

“Okay,” said Yuta, “so let the thought that we belong together sit in there too. She deserves a seat at the table.”

Jaehyun laughed, softly, but a few of the words had caught in him. “You think we belong together?” he said.

“What else do you call this?” Yuta said and kissed him, and Jaehyun knew what he meant, because it was the kind of harmony that birthed something new, like a sky clearing.

Jaehyun held his jaw and kissed him longer. Then he said, “Just sleep here. Okay?”

Yuta smiled. He turned off the light and got into Jaehyun’s bed. Jaehyun found himself pulling Yuta’s head into his chest and wrapping his arms around him, the same way he’d held Yuta in the morning in Incheon. Or else Yuta was tucking himself into Jaehyun the same way he had last week. Maybe they both were, instinctively.

“I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” Yuta said.

Jaehyun closed his eyes. “We were when we woke up last Sunday.”

“But,” said Yuta, “to fall asleep holding you.”

Jaehyun took a deep breath and kissed the crown of Yuta’s head. He was feeling so much that he couldn’t put it into proper words.

“I love you,” he said. He wished there were a stronger way to say it. “I love you.”

“I love you, Jae.”

“I can’t tell you how much I love you,” said Jaehyun. “Saying it isn’t enough.”

“You’re enough,” Yuta said, tightening his arms around him. “I feel it.”

Jaehyun couldn’t walk on his own for four days, and he was slow for another three. He called off work and stayed in the apartment. Doyoung, Johnny, Hyuck and Mark came over a few times, saying they didn’t want him to be bored. But he wasn’t bored at all. He was with Yuta. The apartment was the same as it had always been, but the meaning of the word “home,” Jaehyun found, was changing. Before, “home” had included the things Jaehyun loved, like the plants, like Yuta, whom Jaehyun had always considered a part of his family. But suddenly, home wasn’t just a place for what Jaehyun loved. It was a place for Jaehyun himself, too. A place where he could let his guard down, a place where he could be fully honest, where he could say and show and act on his feelings. He was astonished that he’d never realized he was missing this before.

When Yuta wasn’t in class, they spent the time combing through their history together, digging up moments where they’d misunderstood each other, examining them in the new light. There was something addicting about it—revisiting old memories and turning them over to see a shiny bright underside they’d never known was there. At first, they went back through the past two weeks, exchanging perspectives and yelling and giggling a lot, stopping to kiss, to fall into each other, and then resuming the rehashing. Yuta’s favorite things to talk about were the things Jaehyun had said, things Yuta thought were throwaway comments for their friends’ benefit, but which Jaehyun had meant sincerely. Yuta would ask, “What about when you commented ‘ _I love you_ ’ on my Instagram post in Gongcha?” or “What about when you told Hyuck and Mark you’d been in love with me your entire life?” or “What about when you said the thing you hated most about me was how beautiful I am?” And Jaehyun would say, “Yeah, inspired by a true story,” or, “Yeah, you already know that,” or, “Yuta, I was basically drowning in my own lies and that was my only outlet for the truth, of course I was going to say something I really meant.” And Yuta would give a little sigh of pleasure, or he would touch Jaehyun and all the instants that made up a whole afternoon would pass at once, like a sheet of raindrops falling.

For Jaehyun, though, nothing was as dazzling as the knowledge that they had felt the same things at the same time without knowing it. Yuta said he’d been nonplussed when Jaehyun agreed to kiss him the first time, so much so that he had almost insisted they skip it. “I thought you really didn’t want to,” Yuta said, “and you were just trying to be a good friend and give me the best fake boyfriend I could have. But then you kept saying we should do it, and I guess I started to…well, I started to wonder what might happen.”

“What happened?” Jaehyun asked genuinely.

Yuta smiled. “You tell me. You disappeared to your room.”

“I was lovesick,” said Jaehyun. “But what happened for you?”

Yuta said, “It was like opening a door.”

“How?”

“I thought,” Yuta said, “maybe something was changing with us.”

He said he had seen that window of change, that sliver of light where the door stood ajar, the next morning when they arrived at the beach house and held hands in front of the window in the bedroom, and again when they’d kissed in the ocean, and when Jaehyun was asleep on the side of the towel in the afternoon, and when Jaehyun got into bed with him Saturday night. Jaehyun remembered how his heart had ached in all those moments. He wished he’d talked to Yuta about how he felt before, years before, so they could have been together all that time.

“Hey,” said Jaehyun, tracing designs on Yuta’s skin, “what was going through your head when you wrote your initials on me with sunscreen?”

Yuta said, “Nothing was going through my head. I just wanted you like hell.”

They went back through every word and action that had passed between them since Yuta told Jaehyun to meet him at the Gongcha. They admitted all the times in the last two weeks that they’d been nervous, and longing, and wonderstruck, and confused. Then they started to go further back.

“What about that guy last year? What was his fucking name. The tattoo guy?” Yuta said as they turned off the pavement onto the grass.

“Why are Sicheng’s tattoos the only thing anyone remembers about him?” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah, Sicheng. You guys went out for like six months.”

“Five and a half,” said Jaehyun. “Look, he was hot and nice, I was lonely and stupid.”

“Ouch.”

“Not stupid for dating him,” Jaehyun said. He let Yuta link their arms as they went over a tiny bridge. He knew Yuta didn’t like to see him limping, even though his ankle barely hurt anymore. “Just stupid for pretending I wanted him more than I wanted you.”

Yuta made a noise of satisfaction. He said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t as supportive as I could have been. I was kind of, like, trying not to actively sabotage your relationship.”

“No, you were plenty—you _what?_ ”

“I kept catching myself looking for reasons to hate him,” said Yuta. “I mean, I couldn’t, which only made me want to destroy him more.”

“I had no idea,” said Jaehyun. They emerged from under the shade of the evergreens into the field with the lanes of cherry trees. Seoul Forest was full of people today, but not crowded, since it was too hot to do anything but sit around. “You must have overcorrected by a long shot. All I remember is you being like, ‘I’m so happy for you Jae! He’s so good for you Jae!’”

“Ulglh.” Yuta made a barfing noise. “I’m sorry I ever said that. I take back anytime I ever said you should be with anybody but me.”

Hearing Yuta’s words felt good, like how hearing a pretty melody felt good. Jaehyun had been feeling like that all week. He still wasn’t used to it. He still, a little bit, wondered when it would be interrupted. He didn’t quite know if he was capable of such sustained joy.

“Good,” said Jaehyun, “I take that stuff back, too. Including any time I ever said good luck when you went out with someone.”

“Well I haven’t done much serious dating since high school,” said Yuta.

“No,” said Jaehyun, “but you hooked up a lot.”

Yuta widened his mouth. “I can’t believe this slut-shaming.”

“No shame.”

Jaehyun pointed to Hyuck, Mark, Doyoung and Johnny, who were sitting at the edge of a dappled cherry-tree shadow. Yuta steered them in the boys’ direction, saying, “No, you’re right, most of those dates were attempts at distracting myself from you. I was never that into any of those guys, anyway.”

“So,” Jaehyun ventured, “you were never that into Kun?”

“ _Kun?_ ” said Yuta.

“No?” said Jaehyun. “I just thought, when you told him our relationship was fake, maybe it was because you two were…”

Yuta laughed incredulously. “No! Jaehyun! I told him our relationship was fake because my heart hurt and I needed to talk to someone who wasn’t in our friend group!”

“Oh,” said Jaehyun.

“You thought we had a thing? _Kun?_ And _me?_ ”

Yuta was laughing hysterically. “Well that’s a relief, I guess,” said Jaehyun.

“What’s a relief?” said Hyuck from the shade, holding up a beer in greeting.

Yuta helped Jaehyun sit down next to Mark. Jaehyun said, “Yuta’s not into Kun.”

“Who’s Kun?” said Johnny.

“Not Jaehyun,” said Yuta, sitting next to Hyuck and grabbing a beer.

Jaehyun giggled dumbly, and Yuta passed him the beer. “Kun’s my friend from school. Jaehyun, I can’t believe you thought I was pining after him when I was pining after you.”

“Sorry,” said Jaehyun, taking a sip and giving the beer back to Yuta. “About the pining.”

“You were pining too, so it cancels out,” said Yuta.

“You know,” said Mark, “I can’t tell anymore whether you guys are messing with us or whether you’re genuinely besotted with each other.”

“I’m not messing with anyone!” said Yuta. “I am genuinely besotted!”

“You can’t blame us for being confused,” said Johnny, as Doyoung passed Yuta a box of blueberries and Yuta took a handful before passing the box on to Jaehyun. “Trying to keep up with you two is like trying to understand what the hell goes on in math.”

“No, no,” said Hyuck, “you’re wrong there. They were never not genuinely besotted, remember? Even when they thought they were messing with us, they were really just being stupid in love.”

“God, yeah,” said Doyoung. “Cuddling on the beach and making out, pretending like they were acting.”

“Better than yelling and fighting and pretending like you weren’t yearning,” Yuta retorted.

“All right,” said Hyuck, stretching out his legs and knocking over an empty cup, “if we start getting into the Dumbest Couple Olympics, we’ll never see the end of that conversation.”

While the boys talked, Jaehyun took off his shoes, tossed them behind him, and lay down on his stomach so his feet were in the sun. He put his chin in his hands. Yuta was looking at him, and when Jaehyun caught his eye, he smiled. Jaehyun smiled back. Yuta held his gaze before looking at Johnny, who was gesticulating broadly and saying something about muffins. The cherry tree’s dark green leaves posed perfectly still in the windless air over their heads. Jaehyun wished he could capture it all in a snapshot—not just the way it looked, but the sounds of their voices, the smell of the grass, the sticky summery taste that the blueberries had left on his tongue, the warmth of the sun and of Yuta. There was no way of knowing how long this all would last. He wanted to stop time before he lost it.

“Jaehyun?” said Mark.

“Huh?” Jaehyun looked up from the grass he was uprooting.

“Your leg,” said Mark.

“What?” Jaehyun looked behind him.

“He was asking you how it is,” said Yuta. “Your ankle.”

“Oh,” said Jaehyun, “yeah. Yeah, it’s good, thanks. It basically doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Good,” said Johnny.

“You were zoned out just now,” said Hyuck.

“Yeah.”

Doyoung said, “Thinking about what?”

Jaehyun looked around at their faces. Then he gestured at the filtered green sunlight over their heads. “Wishing this could last forever.”

Yuta gave him a funny look. Doyoung groaned. “Yeah, I know. Rainy season starts any day.”

“Rainy season,” said Mark. “Greasy raisin.”

“WHOA!” said Hyuck. “Grainy reason?”

“Ooh.”

“We have to do a hike before it comes,” said Johnny.

“Yeah,” said Mark.

“Ew,” said Hyuck.

“Jaehyun and Yuta will come.” Johnny looked at him. “Jaehyun, is your ankle in good enough shape for a hike?”

Jaehyun tore the blade of grass he’d pulled up cleanly into two. “Maybe in a couple days, yeah.”

“Well, you guys have fun,” said Hyuck. “Doyoung, you can come to our house and we’ll watch Adventure Time.”

Doyoung kissed his hand and patted Hyuck’s head with it. Hyuck batted his hand away. Doyoung rolled his eyes.

“Hey Hyuck,” said Yuta, throwing a blueberry at him, “what about the fair funds? What was the total y’all raised?”

“I don’t know,” said Hyuck, throwing the blueberry back at Yuta.

“Still?” said Jaehyun.

“It’s been a week,” said Yuta.

“No shit,” said Hyuck. “I don’t know the total because donations are still coming in.”

“Whoa!” said Jaehyun.

“How?” said Yuta.

“You know the guys we got to replace you at the dunk tank and the pie booth? Chenle and Jisung?” said Hyuck.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun, “the YouTube guys.”

“Yeah, they put the donation link in the description of their video of the fair,” said Hyuck. “And people are still sending money.”

“Tons of them!” said Mark. “Their fans are crazy. We’re getting so much cash!”

“Yeah, like, more cash than we raised at the fair itself,” said Hyuck, “which is kind of weird but overall it’s fucking awesome.”

“Hyuck,” said Jaehyun, “that’s so sick.”

“Yeah, I’m proud,” said Yuta. “My baby saving the environment one step at a time.”

“Thanks, dad.”

“What the fuck?” said Johnny. “Why is he your dad?”

Hyuck made a face. “You’re already my big brother, now you want to be my dad too? Greedy ass.”

The afternoon waned. Johnny brought up a bunch of old Facebook photos from five, six, seven years ago, and they swiped through them, laughing at how young they looked. There was a photo of Johnny and a very tiny Hyuck touring Seoul University’s campus. Then some photos of Johnny, Yuta and Jaehyun in the triple dorm they’d shared in their first year of college. Some of Hyuck visiting, still looking impossibly small. Doyoung appeared in the pictures later on, and then Mark. As they flipped, Jaehyun wished he had told Yuta how he felt earlier, so they could have had more time together. Johnny said going through the album was like watching Hyuck grow up right before his eyes. Hyuck said, “You did watch me grow up. In real life.” Johnny replied, “I know, but it’s nice to see it again. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Jaehyun thought he’d probably feel like that in a few years. He’d look back on this idyllic time, this moment that would someday pass just because of the way of the world, because of the way summer always turned to fall and to winter. And he would know he’d never live it again, but it would be nice to remember it.

“You know that photo from Johnny’s Facebook of us, on our first day at the dorm?” Yuta said that evening while Jaehyun watered the plants at the window.

Jaehyun ran his fingers along the bumps of his _Aloe barbadensis,_ and then over the pink-tipped _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_. They didn’t need water today, but he still liked saying hello to them. “Where you were messing up my bowl cut and Johnny was eating ramen in the back?”

Yuta laughed. “No. Well, that one too, but I was thinking of the one where we all had our arms around each other.”

“Oh,” Jaehyun said. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” said Yuta. He watched Jaehyun tilt the watering can over the long striped leaves of the _Chlorophytum comosum_ _._ “Just, like, what were you thinking about then? Do you remember?”

“I was a little nervous,” said Jaehyun, “for classes and stuff. But mostly I was happy.”

“Yeah?”

Jaehyun nodded. “Crazy happy.”

“Me too,” said Yuta. He was cross-legged on the couch. “I thought I’d always be happy if I could just always be with you.”

Jaehyun stopped, holding the watering can in both hands. The sun was gone, but the clear sky was washed rainbow, with orange fading to pale green and blue over the roof of the building across the street.

“Yeah?” he said.

Yuta nodded.

“Were you?” Jaehyun said.

“Was I always happy?”

“Mm hm.”

“Yeah,” said Yuta. “I mean, there are always going to be, like, good times and not-good times. But I always knew the good times would come back.”

Jaehyun poured water onto the soil at the base of the jade plant. It was one of his oldest plants, and he had never figured out its particular species or its scientific name. It had flowered for the second time this March.

“How?” he said.

“Well,” said Yuta. He paused. “Like, when we were kids, and we saw each other every summer, it always felt like a long time in between. Waiting for summer to come back. But summer always did.”

When Jaehyun was little, he had known that, too. Summer would always come back. Yuta would always come back. Had he forgotten that?

“Then we went to college together,” Yuta said, “and you were always there, and it was like you made summer last forever.”

Jaehyun put down the watering can. Yuta got up and put his arms around Jaehyun’s waist from behind, placing his chin on Jaehyun’s shoulder.

“I was the happiest I had ever been before,” Jaehyun said. “When we didn’t have to wait till summer to see each other anymore.”

Yuta leaned his head against Jaehyun’s. “Summer all year round.”

Jaehyun thought of all the summer memories he’d kept with him growing up. How that feeling had carried over into fall and winter and spring, through college and afterward, with Yuta as the only constant. He remembered thinking that he would do anything to keep Yuta by his side.

“The day we moved into the dorm with Johnny was four days after I fell in love with you,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun pulled his head away and looked at him. Yuta shrugged.

“You knew that early?” Jaehyun said.

“No,” said Yuta, “no. I had no idea what was going on at the time. But it’s pretty easy to see now.”

“How do you remember the day?” said Jaehyun.

“Remember when our parents took us dorm shopping at the IKEA?” Yuta said.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun. He remembered the IKEA trip as clearly as he remembered this afternoon. He and Yuta had assembled all the little pieces of a life together. Dishes, lamps, soap, trivets. Everything they tossed in the cart was proof that they were together again, that they’d be together from here on out.

“There was this moment,” Yuta said, “when you were looking at something shiny, I guess it was a plate or something, and the IKEA lights were reflecting off it, onto your face. So you had this square of light on your face. And I saw you and, god, I don’t know, everything stopped for a second. I was like, whoa. Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun said, “You still remember that?”

“It wasn’t the kind of thing you could forget,” said Yuta. “You were just looking at a plate and minding your business. But I felt like I had just looked through a window and caught a glimpse of, of, I don’t know. A piece of my heart or something.”

Jaehyun swallowed, but his throat was still tight. He turned around in Yuta’s arms to face him.

“I don’t remember when I knew,” Jaehyun said. “I just knew.”

“Knew what?” said Yuta, grinning.

“That you,” said Jaehyun, “had a piece of my heart in you.”

Yuta’s lips parted like he was going to say something. Then he kissed Jaehyun, and this time, maybe for the first time, it didn’t feel dreamlike or fleeting or improbable. It just felt right. It felt like something Jaehyun would do anything to hold onto. He understood now. They weren’t a fire burning out or a single passing season. They weren’t a moment or a feeling. They were people, who loved each other, who could choose to be together, again and again if they had to. They could choose forever.

They lingered in the end of the kiss, stretching it out, letting their lips meet again and again gently. Jaehyun laughed at himself, because he should have known all of this, should have known all this time. Feeling Jaehyun’s smile, Yuta smiled too.

“Can I ask you something?” Yuta said.

“Uh huh.”

“Do you still feel,” Yuta said, “like it’s all too good to be true and stuff?”

“No,” said Jaehyun. “I did, a little bit, but not now.”

Yuta nodded, rubbing the small of Jaehyun’s back.

“Do you?” said Jaehyun.

“I never did,” said Yuta.

Jaehyun leaned back just enough to see Yuta’s face. He was blue in the twilight. There were years of memory in the way he was looking at Jaehyun. Maybe there always were. Jaehyun bowed his forehead to Yuta’s, and they stood together without talking for a few minutes.

The sun was long gone. That was okay. Jaehyun still wished he had confessed to Yuta earlier. But maybe it wasn’t so bad that they had come together slowly. Maybe it was just the way they were. Their time wasn’t limited, and it wasn’t running out, and in a way, the years of aching hearts were beautiful, now that Jaehyun knew what they were all for.

Once there was no light coming in the window except the light from the street, Yuta turned on the apartment lights and they went to the kitchen to make dinner. Yuta made Jaehyun sit down at the table to take weight off his ankle. When Jaehyun complained, he gave him scallions to chop. Jaehyun complained again after the scallions were chopped in half a minute, and Yuta gave him onions to cut. That took a while longer. Jaehyun was going to ask what they were making, but he realized he liked how it was a mystery.

“Hey,” Yuta said, stirring a boiling pot, “you didn’t finish watering the plants, did you? Tell me who still needs water and I’ll do it.”

“I finished,” said Jaehyun. “Don’t worry.”

“What about _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_?” said Yuta.

Jaehyun’s mouth fell open. “Did you memorize that?”

“Was it right?” Yuta asked.

“It was perfect,” said Jaehyun.

“Just like me,” said Yuta.

“Yeah,” said Jaehyun. “But _Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata_ doesn’t need to be watered today. She takes a drink like twice a month.”

Yuta said, “Oh.”

Jaehyun snickered.

“Well,” said Yuta, “maybe I still have more to learn about Ana.”

“I can teach you,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta tapped broth off the spoon and set it on a plate. Then he came to the table, kissed Jaehyun’s head, and picked up the cutting board with the onions.

“Tell me everything you know, baby,” he said and dumped the onions into the pot.

Jaehyun’s heart swelled. He stood up and rinsed his hands off in the sink. Yuta turned to him, putting down the cutting board. Judging by his expression, he was about to admonish Jaehyun for getting up. Jaehyun hugged him. Yuta said, “Wh…Hey.”

“Thank you,” Jaehyun said.

“For what?”

“For learning Ana’s name, and listening to me talk about plants, and helping me with my ankle and…” There were a dozen, a hundred other things Jaehyun wanted to thank him for that he couldn’t name.

“You’re just thanking me for being in love with you,” Yuta laughed into his shoulder.

“Yes,” Jaehyun said, letting him go.

“Don’t,” said Yuta. “You make it effortless.”

Jaehyun shook his head. That wasn’t what he meant. “It’s not the effort. It’s just…”

“Okay. I see,” said Yuta. He ran his hands down Jaehyun’s arms. “You’re welcome. And while we’re here, I have some things to thank you for.”

“Hmm,” said Jaehyun.

“Yeah. For fake dating me even though you knew you’d suffer.”

“Don’t, god, don’t thank me for that again.”

“For all the coffees you bought me when we were fake dating…”

“There were like two.”

“And for your trust, and your time, and your perpetual summer,” said Yuta, “and the piece of your heart you let me keep.”

Jaehyun smiled, the reflexive objection dying in his throat. They looked at each other.

“Thank you for keeping it,” said Jaehyun.

Yuta kissed the corner of his mouth. Then he said, “ _And_ thank you for staying off your feet until your ankle’s fully healed.”

“You let me water the plants while I was on my feet,” said Jaehyun.

“Lapse in judgment. I was thinking about how good you looked and I forgot to think about other things.”

“Okay,” said Jaehyun, “if that’s all it takes, then think about how good I look now.”

Yuta stuck his tongue out at him and picked up the spoon to stir the soup. “I can’t. Don’t you see I have a dinner to cook?”

Jaehyun didn’t see himself ever getting tired of this routine of home, of watering the plants and making dinner and quibbling with Yuta. Of course, he hadn’t ever gotten tired of it, not for seven years. Maybe it was the same as the way Yuta never got tired of hearing him talk about plants. Or when Hyuck played along with Mark’s rhyming game or when Doyoung insisted that Johnny tell him the truth. After enough times, they should all get tired of it and stop, but they didn’t. Jaehyun knew the reason now. It had taken him a long time to see it, but now that he did, it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 the end <3  
> thank you for reading perpetual summer!!! i hope it was everything you wanted! it was so much fun to post a chapter a day this week, and thanks a ton to everyone who read or kudosed or commented or mentioned it to me because you all made it even more fun!! thanks also to anyone who might read this later on, it means a lot that you stayed till the end :)  
> a lot of this fic was written from a place of looking forward to summer and daydreaming about the beach so i hope you felt a little ray of sun or a salty breeze drift your way wherever you live! i definitely did :') thank you for spending some time here and don't forget that summer's little sister spring is on her way!!!!! (and she will sweep you off your feet so get ready)


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